


all your dreams will come true (so be careful what you dream)

by princesskay



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Barebacking, Extremely Dubious Consent, Fae Magic, Falling In Love, First Time Bottoming, M/M, Masturbation, Multiple Orgasms, Mysticism, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Rimming, Smut, bottom bill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:06:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 62,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27305320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princesskay/pseuds/princesskay
Summary: When Bill stepped off the plane in Belfast, he wasn't sure what he expected of the impromptu vacation - but he never anticipated a magical encounter with a creature of the Underworld ...or developing feelings for him
Relationships: Holden Ford/Bill Tench
Comments: 69
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is in no way meant to be culturally or mythologically accurate, I just wanted to write something smutty and a little dark for the season lol Happy Halloween, all!

The air tastes and smells different wherever you go, and those distinctions don’t stop at country borders but vary city to city, at times suburb to suburb. Bill remembers the smell of his small hometown in Pennsylvania, a rustbelt burg trapped in the dying efforts of the steel industry and clouded by factory smog even though he hasn't been back in ten years. The scent of war-torn Korea can haunt his dreams, old sense memory startling him awake with the stench of cannon-fire and scorched flesh. Sometimes he still smells Nancy's perfume and the freshly mowed lawn of their home in Fredericksburg in his apartment miles away, and the other places his travels working for the FBI had taken him: New York, California, Texas, Wisconsin. They all smell different. 

None of them have ever struck him with such bone-deep nostalgia and visceral homesickness that he feels when he steps off the plane in Belfast. 

Bill doesn’t believe in reincarnation or any other type of mysticism that might have distantly tied him to Ireland despite his heritage. He thinks it must be the atmospheric pressure of the sea level or jet lag, the disorientation of being deposited off the plane and onto foreign soil without any sense of direction or foreknowledge of his location aside from what he read in the travel brochures. 

Shaking off the momentary thunder of his heartbeat, he waves down a taxi from amongst the hubbub at the front of the airport. He gives the driver the address to his hotel, the one scrap of planning he’d done for this hastily arranged vacation. 

“Business or pleasure?” The cabbie asks, casting him a friendly smile in the rearview mirror. 

_ Neither,  _ Bill wants to say. 

“Pleasure.” 

“Oh, then you’ve come to the right place.”

Bill ignores the taxi driver’s attempt at playing concierge, and rolls down his window to smoke a cigarette. 

If it was up to him, he would be back in Quantico working, but he hadn’t been given a choice. Not that he was entirely beyond fault in this whole situation. After he and Nancy’s divorce last year, he’d been drinking a little too much, and getting sloppy and uncommitted to his task as a leader of his department. He shouldn’t be surprised that someone took notice. The evidence is right there in the interview transcripts - his weary sighs, languishing questions, noncommittal interrogation techniques, and his unwillingness to pursue tough lines of questioning whenever the subject chose to be evasive. 

When Wendy called him into her office and asked him point-blank if he was feeling depressed or unhappy, he hadn’t been able to lie, only offer a defensive retort. 

_ I’m not fucking depressed. I’m tired.  _

“Exhausted” would have been a better word, but “tired” was good enough for her. Her next order of business had been to point out that he has so many vacation days stacked up that he could skip work for the next two months and not have to worry about his paycheck. 

“You need a vacation.” She had asserted, “I don’t care where you go or what you do. I don’t care if you stay home and sleep. Just go give yourself the break you’ve earned, and come back with your head on straight.” 

It wasn’t a suggestion. 

Bill didn’t give much thought to where he wanted to take his forced vacation. He just knew that he wanted it to be far away from his one-bedroom apartment and the daily reminders that Nancy is now his ex-wife and he’s hardly a father to his son anymore. He pulled out a map, scanned the numerous possibilities, and landed on Belfast for only two reasons. 

One, his father’s family immigrated from Ireland two generations ago so it’s the only overseas country he has any connection to aside from Korea - and he would never want to go back there. Two, he has a buddy that he once worked with at the FBI who is now an INTERPOL agent living in Belfast. 

He called up Jim Barney after making the split-second decision, and asked what hotel he should stay at and what sights he should see. He’d only meant to get a little direction in a city he’s never been to before, but Jim had been overjoyed that he was visiting. As such, Bill had been roped into attending a Halloween party at Jim’s house tomorrow evening. 

_ Not Halloween. Samhain.  _ He reminds himself. 

Jim’s wife is into that Wicca stuff. Tarot cards, palm readings, that kind of thing. According to Jim, this Samhain holiday is Ireland’s pagan version of Halloween before the Catholic Church got a hold of it and turned it religious. 

“Is there going to be alcohol?” Was Bill’s only question. When Jim said yes, he agreed to come to the party without further complaint. 

As the cabbie pulls up in front of his hotel, Bill realizes that he isn’t so much looking forward to the rented accommodations or wandering around Belfast’s sight-seeing locations so much as he’s looking forward to Jim’s stupid party. He doesn’t think too hard about how he’s been spending too much time alone back home, or how when he isn’t alone, he’s in the company of serial killers. He tells himself he's really just looking forward to getting drunk off his ass. 

Bill checks into the hotel at the front desk, and drags his luggage up to the room. Leaving his bags at the foot of the bed, he surveys the lodgings with a dispassionate gaze before deciding that he doesn’t give a damn about the psychedelic, 1970s geometric wallpaper blaring in shades of orange and yellow just as long as the bed is comfortable. He had accrued quite the headache during the flight from Dulles to Belfast, and he can already feel the jet lag setting in. 

Crawling onto the bed with his shoes still on his feet, he closes his eyes and lets sleep take him. 

  
  
  


Bill wakes some time later with a start. 

Peeling his mouth away from the dried drool on the pillow, he pushes up from the sheets, and scans the room to find that dusk had fallen while he was napping. It’s past six o’clock, and he’d slept away four hours of his first day in Belfast. Some vacation. 

Bill’s gaze startles from the clock to the window when he identifies the distant laughter and the low beat of drums as the noise that had awoken him. Crawling off the bed, he goes to the window and looks down into the street to see a long parade of costumed folks marching toward the hotel. Onlookers line the sidewalks with cameras while other anti-festive folks such as himself weave in and out of the clogged foot traffic with scowls on their faces. 

His brain has barely crawled from the dense clutches of sleep, but the sudden volition to go down to the street to watch the rest of the parade grips him. Usually he would be irritated by the inconvenience of a street parade stomping below his window, and he tells himself as much even as he jogs down the stairs to the lobby of the hotel. 

When he gets out to the sidewalk, however, any sense of exasperation melts away. Lighting a cigarette, he watches with a faint smile tugging at his mouth as the painted faces and costumes dance past him, intermingled with the drummers energetically thumping out a raucous beat and flipping their drumsticks in the air. Some of the people are dressed as spirits, ghosts, skeletons, and ghouls while still others have taken a more modern approach to the holiday with popular culture references from horror flicks. 

Bill is busy cataloging all the different costumes when his gaze stops on the black pony walking in between a white-sheeted ghost and Michael Myers. The horse's mane is unkempt and fulsome, draping over it’s regal nose in tangled waves, and a chain hangs around its sinewy neck though it’s untethered from any owner. It’s almost as if it senses him staring because it’s nostrils flare with a deep breath, and its eyes which are red - coal red like burning fire - shift to meet him. 

Bill’s heart nearly stops in his chest. His blood runs hot then cold, prickling every hair on his body upright and tingling. He swivels his head toward the other spectators to check if anyone else is seeing this strange beast, but everyone is laughing, clapping, and snapping pictures as if nothing about this parade is out of the ordinary. 

When he looks back, the colt is gone. 

_ What the hell?  _ He thinks, moving past a group of teenage girls chattering about the costumes so that he can get closer to where he’d last seen the black horse. His heart hammers, and the goosebumps rippling down his body don’t abate as he walks parallel to the parade, combing the faces for any sign of the horse. 

As the last of the parade moves past him and down the street, any sign of the unusual beast is gone. He’s left standing in the middle of the asphalt littered with ribbons, glitter, and candy, wondering if the jet lag has him fucked up and seeing things. Or maybe there’s something in the air. 

  
  
  


Bill asks the hotel clerk where the nearest pub is at. 

“Take your pick.” She tells him before relating a number of options within walking distance. 

He picks one that also serves dinner. Over a burger and beer, he tells himself to get it together. All of that talk with Jim and his wife about Samhain and spirits got a little too far into his head, and now he’s projecting his own exhaustion and raw nerves onto a stupid Halloween parade. 

But he can’t get the apparition of the black horse out of his mind, nor it’s burning red eyes which had seemed to sear into him and through his brain. If anyone looked that far - which they don’t, because he doesn’t let anyone get beyond superficial acquaintance - they would see a lot of sordid and fucked-up shit. Memories of his rough childhood, his father’s abuse and abandonment, his tour with the Army in Korea, his time interviewing murderous freaks, and his own deleterious coping strategies. 

Nancy told him once not very long ago that the reason they had never worked out is because he doesn’t open up or let anyone in. He shouldn’t have even tried with her, he realizes. He isn’t going to make that mistake again. If he has to be alone for the rest of his life so be it. It’s easier to grapple with his thoughts in isolation rather than face having to tell anyone all the things in his mind. 

Draining the last of his beer, Bill tries to put that thought out of his mind. He came here so he didn’t have to think about his ex-wife or his own shortcomings. He polishes off the last of his burger, and flags down the waiter to ask for whiskey. There’s no reason to wait on Jim’s party to start getting wasted. 

  
  
  


Just like that, Bill spends his first day in Belfast getting drunk. He doesn’t make it more than a block beyond his hotel room, but when he staggers back to his accommodations and falls into bed once more, he hardly cares. 

That night, he dreams of an endless parade of painted faces, and among them, a black colt with heavy chains draped around its neck and eyes that glow red and satanic. He walks through the crowd to stand in front of the stud, and puts out his hand. Instead of putting its nose to the offered caress, the horse whinnies and shakes its head. 

“I cannot be tamed or mounted.” It says in a voice so soft that Bill is startled it’s coming from such a terrifying beast. 

He tries to take a step back, but his feet are bolted in place. 

The horse leans so close that Bill can feel its hot, saccharine breath on his face. It challenges softly, “Try it. I will put you on your back and break you.”

Bill wakes to the darkness of the room and the hushed sigh of the wind past the curtains. He doesn’t remember opening a window, but he’s exhausted and still too drunk to consider getting up and closing it. Confounded by the dream, he rolls over and falls back into intoxicated slumber. 

The next morning, the room is utterly cold from leaving the window open all night. He’s shuddering as he crawls from beneath the sheets in his underpants and slams the window shut. Below his hotel room, the city is awake and moving briskly now that the clock has slipped past ten. He doesn’t remember the last time he slept in so late. 

Grabbing a change of clothes from his suitcase, he goes into the bathroom to take a shower and get himself presentable. A glance in the mirror affords him a depressing glimpse of a frayed man, his hair disheveled and pressed to one side, his eyes bloodshot and heavy from drinking, and his cheeks pale and almost sickly. It doesn’t look as if he slept so long. He could have been on an all-night bender according to his appearance. 

While he hunches beneath the hot, refreshing spray of the water, he tries to shake the lingering sense of unease from his mind. He’s supposed to be here unwinding and having a good time. Wendy won’t be happy if he comes back to work in the same state of disillusionment as when he left. 

He doesn’t bother shaving because what the hell? He’s on vacation. Throwing on a pair of checkered slacks and a blue polo, he leaves the hotel to find himself some breakfast. 

A shop down the street offers sandwiches and coffee, the perfect remedy for his hangover fatigue. He sets himself up in a two-person table by the front window, and watches the people of Belfast and tourists not unlike himself trudge down the sidewalk in an endless parade. Thankfully, he doesn’t see any black horses among them. 

  
  
  


After breakfast, he feels like a living, breathing human again. Quietly, he tells himself that he was out of it last night from the long flight and the whiskey, and he’s perfectly fine. He’s going to walk around the city today, see what he can get up to, and have a good time at Jim’s party tonight. 

Back at the hotel, he calls Wendy to let her know that he got in safely last night. 

“How’s Belfast?” She asks. 

“Oh, the whiskey’s great.”

“Is that all?”

“I’m gonna do a little sight-seeing today. Jim’s invited me to some hippy Halloween party that his wife is hosting tonight. I figure I’ll go over there, see what that’s all about.”

“You sound tired.”

“Believe it or not, I slept until ten o’clock this morning. Is there such a thing as too much sleep?”

“No. There is such a thing as drinking too much.”

“Wendy, I’m fine.”

“You’re alone in a big city. Forgive me for worrying.” She says, her tone barely concealing her frustration. 

“You’re the one who sent me out here.”

“I didn’t send you directly to Belfast. I said take a vacation. I thought you might go sit on the beach and drink martinis.” 

“Seriously? That’s what you thought  _ I  _ would do with vacation time?”

His skeptical tone garners him a laugh from the other side of the line. “All right, fine.” She admits, “That isn’t really what I expected. But please, promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I can take care of myself.”

After they hang up, Bill dials Jim’s number next to see when he should be over for the party. 

“We’re starting at three o’clock.” Jim says, “Anita has the whole thing planned out. Carving pumpkins, the dinner, the ceremony …”

“Ceremony?”

“Yeah, Samhain is a time when we remember the spirits of folks who are no longer with us. It’s a time of reflection and renewal. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too crazy. Anita’s the only one taking this whole thing completely serious.”

“When do we get to the drinking?”

“After we put the kids to bed.” 

“Great.” Bill mutters, “So maybe I should show up already a little buzzed.”

Jim laughs. “It wouldn’t hurt you to do a little reflection and renewal, you know.”

“Don’t. You sound like my mother.”

“Relax, it’s gonna be fun.”

“If you say so. See you then.”

In the hotel lobby, Bill grabs a couple of the tourist flyers. Following the sidewalk along the Lagan River which borders Belfast, he walks away from the hotel in no particular direction, and leafs through the pamphlets for anything that catches his eye. Belfast has a few nice golf courses that would have attracted him immediately prior to his arrival, but that sense of exhaustion and lack of focus has yet to leave him. He blames the fog in his mind on the strong whiskey, and randomly picks the Ulster Museum from the ream of suggested tourist spots. 

The museum is a careful documentation of Irish history, containing everything from art, to textiles, to artifacts and archaeology. He finds himself intrigued as he wanders through the displays with the other tourists, mostly families with young children or older couples walking hand-in-hand. 

He’d never known much about his family’s history aside from his mother’s ancestors. His father was the Irishman, a hard-working yet brutal man of few words who had never elaborated on his family tree beyond scarce remarks about his parent’s efforts to break into the American Dream. From what he understood, his paternal grandfather was no different from his dad when it came to the excessive drinking and heavy-handed discipline. 

Bill has never hit his own son, but he has to wonder if he’s following in the very same steps as the rest of the men in the Tench family tree. Bitter, isolated, unhappy. 

When he comes out of the museum, it’s already three o’clock, and he doesn’t have time to consider the past or its impact on the future. He flags down a taxi cab and gives the driver Jim’s address. 

Jim doesn’t live far from his hotel, just a few miles inward from the Lagan River in a row of near identical red brick houses. When he climbs out of the taxi cab and mounts the porch steps, the door swings open without giving him an opportunity to knock. 

“Bill!” Jim says, waving him in, “I’m so glad you could make it.”

“Thanks for having me. Sorry I'm late. I lost track of time over at the museum.” 

“That's okay. You just missed the pumpkin carving.”

As they enter the foyer, Anita comes in from the kitchen with her apron on. Her waist-length dreadlocks are decorated with an assortment of gold rings and charms and piled on top of her head in a precarious bundle. Her fingers and neck are bedazzled with eclectic jewelry, the largest of which is a gold pentagram on black ribbon around her throat. 

“Bill, welcome to our Samhain feast.” She says, giving him a warm hug. 

“Uh, thanks.” Bill says, not having the heart to tell her that he really has no interest in the spiritual festivities. 

Jim and Anita had invited a handful of other friends to the party, most of whom Bill doesn’t know and doesn’t fit in with. He can tell these are Anita’s Wiccan friends from the way they’re dressed and the ubiquitous pentagrams on necklaces. 

Though Jim bids him to relax on the couch with a soda while Anita finishes dinner, Bill lingers on the fringes of the chattering groups in the living room which is lit with candles and decorated for the season by autumnal wreaths, pumpkins, gourds, and skeletons. He notes the prepared altar that he imagines is meant to be a part of the ceremony with a shiver of apprehension. 

_ He’s not a pussy.  _ He reminds himself, ignoring the increasing sense of unease on his chest.  _ Besides, none of this is real. It’s just for fun.  _

“Who are you?” A small voice from below his waist jolts his gaze from the altar to the little girl of no more than eight years old standing at his feet. 

The girl has two pigtails of auburn hair and a smattering of freckles across her button nose. Her wide, dark eyes stare up at him judgmentally. 

“Bill. Who are you?” He asks. 

“Ciara.” 

“Nice to meet you.”

“I’ve never seen you before.” Ciara points out. 

“That’s because I just got into town. I’m visiting Jim. He’s an old friend.”

“Oh. My mum is best friends with Anita.” Ciara says, “Are you celebrating Samhain with us?”

“Looks like it.”

“Samhain is the best time of year.” Ciara continues, unafflicted by the nerves that are daunting Bill. “The veil between our world and the spirit world is so thin that we can reach through to the other side. We can talk to the dearly departed, and maybe even see a faery. Wouldn’t that be so wonderful? To see a faery?”

Bill scowls at the child’s romanticized view of death and the holiday. “Sounds dangerous.”

“That’s what’s so exciting about it.” 

“It is?”

“Uh, yes. Are you a scaredy-cat?” Ciara presses, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrows at him. 

“No.” He scoffs, immediately wondering why he gives a damn what an eight-year old thinks about him. Still, he defends himself. “I’m an FBI agent. Do you know what that means?”

“You catch bad guys?”

“Yeah, I catch bad guys who would eat little girls like you for supper.”

Ciara’s eyes widen, and she turns and scampers into the crowd toward her mother. 

Bill bites his lower lip.  _ Real tough, Tench. Scaring the living daylights out of an eight year old.  _

He should probably just leave. 

Before the sentiment can spur him to action, Anita comes into the room and announces that the feast is prepared, but before they eat, they will pray before the altar. 

“Samhain is a time of death, yes. But it’s also a time of renewal.” She says, scanning the group with a smile on her face, “Winter is coming, the days are growing longer and colder. It is a time of rest for the earth so that next year, when it is time to plant seeds and grow again, it will be replenished and give us in abundance what nourishment we need. It is a time to let ourselves rest, too. Reflect on all that we have not only lost, but also gained in the last year. It is a changing of seasons - and of ourselves.”

Bill has to admit that he’s never thought about the end of autumn in such a positive light before. And it’s perhaps the first time this year that he’s tried to consider what he gained instead of focusing solely on what he’s lost. 

While Anita recites the prayers before the altar, he tries to put Nancy and Brian and his own failures out of his mind. Work is doing well. He and Wendy could be published by next year. They’ve perfected their interview technique to a near science. His personal life may be in shambles, but his career is on an upward trajectory. He has to at least be grateful for that. 

Dinner is a long and jubilant affair. Anita cooked a roast chicken, and most of the party attendees brought some type of dish. She had also paired a few good bottles of wine with the meal that are all empty by the time they’ve cleaned their plates. 

Bill spends most of dinner at the end of the table with Jim, conversing under their breaths about work while Anita chatters on about the festival with her friends. At the conclusion of the meal however, she invites everyone back into the living room for palm readings. 

“I’ll go first.” Jim volunteers. 

“Seriously?” Bill asks, nudging him with an elbow. 

“It’s best to just go along with what she wants.” Jim says, chuckling under his breath, “And she really is good at it.”

“Do I have to do it?”

“No, but a little self-reflection never hurt anyone.” 

Bill scowls as Jim leaves his side, and submits to the palm reading. 

Everyone is gathered around watching intently while Anita leans close with her reading glasses perched on her nose and her thumb stroking the dips and creases of Jim’s palm. Bill stands at the edges again, hoping he won’t be singled out. It doesn’t seem to be a possibility as most of the people attending this party are eager to partake in the readings. They each sit down ahead of him, taking in Anita’s interpretations and suggestions with wide-eyed faith. 

As the group disseminates to fight over which horror movie to watch, Bill tries to slip away unnoticed, but Anita waves him over. 

“Bill, come here. I haven’t done your reading yet.”

“I don’t know, Anita.” He says, scratching the back of his neck anxiously. 

“Come on,” She coaxes, crooking her finger at him, “It’ll be fun.”

With a sigh, Bill sits down across from her, and hesitantly extends both hands. 

She peeks over the rim of her glasses at him with a smirk, but her hands are warm and gentle when she studies his right hand. She’s quiet for several long moments, eventually humming out a series of intrigued noises. 

“What?” He asks, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “‘Hmm.’ What does that mean?”

“I’m not done yet.” She says, exchanging his right hand for the left. 

“What does it tell you? I’m going to get cancer and die?”

“Oh, stop.” She murmurs, stroking her fingertip down the center of his left palm. 

“So no?”

“No. No cancer.” She says, “But I do see a clear divide within the reading. Your fate line is strong, indicating good fortune in your career; and so is the life line, so you have nothing to worry about when it comes to your health. It is your marriage line and love lines that are concerning.” 

Bill averts his gaze. “Yeah, well, you might be able to guess why that would be.”

“It only indicates that you have experienced some difficulty in love, not that it will last forever.”

“You can see all that in my palm, huh?” He asks, skeptically. 

“There’s also the wisdom line.” 

Bill looks back at her, and she’s gazing at him with equal measures of compassion and sternness. 

“The head line. It’s chained, indicating a lack of decisiveness and disordered thought, and tendency for heavy drinking.” 

Bill yanks his hand away. “Thanks, Anita, but I think I’ve had enough.”

“It’s not all bad, Bill.” She says, her tone gentle as he rises to leave. “You carry the sign of the cross in the center of your palm. You have a good sense of mystery and prediction. A sixth sense if you will. Your dreams usually come true.”

“My dreams?” He echoes, his pulse thumping as he recalls his fantasy meeting with the elusive stallion. 

“Yes.” Anita says, smiling softly. “So be careful what you dream.”

“Uh, thanks, I guess.”

He escapes back into the living room where  _ The Exorcist _ is starting on the television, and Jim is taking drink orders. The parents are trying to corral the kids back into the bedroom. 

Bill huddles on the end of the couch with his glass of whiskey. As he lights a cigarette, Ciara and her mother walk past on their way to the bedrooms. The little girl pulls her mom to a stop so she can address Bill. 

“Are you walking home tonight, Bill?” She asks. 

“Probably.”

“Well, then you should be careful. The  _ púca  _ will take a drunk human walking alone by the water when the moon is full.”

“ _ Púca _ ?”

“Sorry,” Ciara’s mom says, casting her daughter a warning glare, “She’s read a few too many ghost stories.”

“They’re not ghosts, mum. They’re mischievous faeries who like to play tricks on humans.” Ciara protests. 

“Okay, faery stories. They’re just stories. Now come on.”

Bill watches the two retreat down the hall, and shakes his head. Kids. 

He stays through half of  _ The Exorcist  _ and two whiskeys before deciding he should really head home. He had plenty of wine with dinner, and the whiskey is going straight to his head. Wendy’s admonition about staying safe echoes in his brain. 

He bids Jim and Anita goodnight and thanks them for a delicious dinner.

“Want me to call you a taxi?” Jim asks as he walks Bill to the front door. 

“It’s not far.”

“Are you sure? I can’t have you falling into a ditch on account of us.”

“I’m fine. I’m not even that drunk.”

Jim scoffs. “Call me in the morning so I know you got there.”

“Jesus. You and Wendy.” Bill says, shaking his head. “I can take care of myself.”

Jim acquiesces, and lets him out the door. 

Taking to the sidewalk, Bill walks down the block before the Lagan River comes into view. He crosses the street to the railing, and leans against it. Closing his eyes, he breathes in the scent of the water. The cool breeze coming in across the bay soothes the intoxicated flush on his cheeks. He’s just drunk enough to forget the unease of earlier in the day and disregard Jim and Wendy’s warnings. And Ciara’s. 

Bill pulls out a cigarette, and studies the winking lights of the city across the river and the gleaming disc of a full moon with a faint smile tugging at his mouth. He’s sat in the same rooms as convicted killers and listened to them detail how they tortured and killed innocent people. If that doesn’t make every other threat pale in comparison, he doesn’t know what does. He certainly isn’t frightened of some campfire story about abduction into the Underworld. 

He watches the water for what feels like an hour before figuring he should get along. The mysterious pull towards sleep he’s been feeling since he got here nips at his heels. Pitching his cigarette out into the river, he trudges in the direction of his hotel. 

When he turns onto the road where his lodgings are located, the street is strangely deserted. Overhead, the street lamp flickers sporadically, flashing erratic, yellow light across the vacant asphalt. 

Suddenly, every hair on Bill’s body stands on end just as it had during the parade. He realizes he’s standing in almost exactly the same spot he had been when he first noticed the red-eyed stallion. 

And then he hears it: the heavy clop of hooves striking pavement. 

He presses his eyes shut as a cold sweat breaks out beneath his shirt.  _ Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around.  _

Despite his own resistance to acknowledge the otherworldly creature, he’s drawn in a slow circle by a magnetic force he can’t control. 

The street lamp flickers in three more jagged bursts before going out with a crackle. The street plunges into darkness. The only illumination is the red glow of eyes watching him from the end of the avenue. 

Paralyzed, Bill watches with heart racing as the black horse paws at the ground. The sound of its hoof striking the asphalt echoes through his brain like a ringing gong. The beast shakes its head, and huffs out a disgruntled whinny as if in a challenge. 

Bill forces his feet to move though it feels like they’re fighting against a surging tide. 

“Who are you?” He shouts, his voice muffled inside his own head. “What are you? What do you want from me?”

The horse whinnies again, sharper this time. It shifts impatiently.  _ Chase me. Chase me. I dare you.  _

Bill breaks into a run. He doesn’t know where he’s going, which way is left or right, or if he’s standing on even ground any longer. He chases the elusive creature through the streets of Belfast, and doesn’t see anyone else on the streets with him. Every corner he turns, he glimpses the beast running just ahead of him. Just as he thinks his fingers will close around it’s black mane, it vanishes again as if into thin air. He can hardly breathe, but he forces himself to keep going, fueled by some crazed determination to reign the stallion in and climb onto its back. 

What could have been an hour or more passes. The streets around him blur, the names melding into a jumble of unintelligible letters, the lanes blurring into one long strip of asphalt that never ends. 

His last memory of the pavement beneath his feet is skidding around a corner, and coming face-to-face with the smoke-breathing horse. It swaggers from the shadows towards him, red eyes burning into his soul. Then it rears and kicks him in the chest. It doesn’t hurt when he falls to the ground, but he’s unable to pull himself back to his feet. 

He loses consciousness just as the creature stands over him whispering, “Didn’t I tell you? I’ll put you on your back and break you.”

  
  
  


The sweet smell of the river drifts past the open window of Bill’s hotel room. Floor-length, gauzy curtains dance in the breeze, the quiet rustle of fabric the only sound aside from the wind. 

Bill labors from within the sound clutches of sleep to wrench his heavy eyelids open. He finds that he’s sprawled facedown on the bed. Somehow, he’d gotten undressed. His boxers thinly shield him from the breeze drifting through the window, but the air isn’t cold; rather it's distinctly humid and tinged with a spicy scent like that of incense. Every limb and fiber of his body is dense and paralyzed, as if a strange weight is lying on top of him and making it excessively difficult to move. 

_ I was dreaming.  _ He thinks as the recollection of his insane chase after the wild stallion presents itself in his mind.  _ That must be it. What the hell did Jim put in those drinks?  _

Uttering a groan, he manages to roll his stiff, sleep-laden limbs over in the bed. As he sinks back against the mound of pillows, that logical explanation shatters into a million pieces. A horrified gasp rips from his throat, and any sense of immobility is removed by the sheer panic cutting like lightning through his chest. He scrambles upright against the headboard, and plasters himself as far away from the window as he can. 

From behind the filmy, white sheen of the curtains, a pair of red eyes watch him intently. 

“Wh-who’s there?” He asks, his voice emerging in a hoarse, trembling whisper. 

The figure perched on his windowsill doesn’t move. It doesn’t blink. 

“What do you want?” 

“Are you afraid?” The creature’s voice is soft and lilting, seductive. It doesn’t match the terrifying beast that had trampled him to the ground. 

“No.” Bill retorts. “I just want to know what the fuck you want from me.”

“I think you  _ are _ afraid.”

“Of you? I don’t even know what you are yet. I can’t be afraid of something I don’t understand.”

“That’s interesting. Usually humans are terrified of everything they don’t understand or recognize … especially something like me.” 

“I mean that I don’t know what you’re capable of.”

“Oh, I’m capable of very much.” 

Bill presses harder against the headboard as the figure moves from behind the curtain. It isn’t the beastly presentation of a black horse, but the lithe figure of a young man dressed in a black robe; however, his auburn hair falls in unruly curls across his forehead in the same manner of the horse, and he has the same glowing red eyes. 

“What are you?” Bill asks, shifting his gaze from the young man in search of something to use to defend himself. He wishes he had his gun, but he hadn’t thought he would need it on vacation. 

“You can call me Holden. I’ve found that humans like it when I have a human name for them to call me by.”

“What’s your real name?”

“I can’t tell you that.” Holden murmurs, drawing closer to the bed. 

Even in the shadows, Bill can make out boyish but handsome features. Rosy cheeks, plush lips, a gentle, pleasing swoop of jawline beneath pale skin. 

“You’re what I was chasing?” Bill asks, still hardly able to believe it. He quietly tells himself that he’s still dreaming, and he’s going to fight his way back to consciousness any second now. 

“Yes.” Holden says, stopping at the end of the bed. “You didn’t do very well, did you, Bill? It’s okay, most people don’t. I appreciate the effort nonetheless.”

“How do you know my name?”

“I know all about you. You’re the law - very noble - but you just left your wife, and you drink too much to forget. Isn’t that right?”

Bill glares at the creature poised at the end of his bed. The thought almost makes him want to laugh, but he can’t dismiss the possibility. “ Are you a spirit? A … a faery?”

“I’m not of this earth, if that’s what you mean.”

Bill’s body thrills with a clash of exhilaration and horror. The hairs on the back of his neck are at attention again, an effect that ripples down the rest of his body as Holden moves closer. The young man is like an electrical current that rouses Bill’s blood to sing and sting in his veins. 

He moves toward the other side of the bed, casting a glance at the bedside lamp, the only object within reaching distance that he might be able to use as a weapon. 

“Don’t do that,” Holden advises, climbing onto the bed on his hands and knees, “Come on, Bill.”

“You stay away from me.” Bill orders, struggling to sound authoritative. 

When Holden prowls closer, unheeding of the command, he lunges for the lamp. Grabbing it by its wooden base, he swings without looking. As he whirls around, he expects the lamp to strike flesh and bone, and it does - with Holden's fist ending it’s violent interia. 

Bill gapes as the slight boy rips the lamp from his hand, and tosses it across the room. He’s too shocked to flee the bed. He watches helplessly, as if he’s a prisoner within his own body, as Holden climbs on top of him and pins him back against the sheets with a forearm on his throat. 

The suffocating weight of Holden’s arm breaks the paralysis. Bill squirms, and uses both hands around his wrist and elbow in a feeble attempt to wrench the arm from his esophagus. His struggling seems to make no effect on Holden who calmly applies even more force with his forearm. 

“Shh-shh.” He whispers, using his other hand to stroke Bill’s perspiring temple. “Relax.”

Bill scowls up at him, throwing his entire body weight into unseating Holden from his straddled position on his hips. He should be able to throw a young man of this size and height easily off him, but try as he might, he can’t escape. 

“Bill, please, stop. You’re wasting precious energy.” Holden says, easing up on Bill’s throat. “I know humans only have a certain supply, and I would like to use all of yours for other … more pleasurable endeavors.”

Bill goes still against the sheets as the insinuation triggers a well of heat deep in his belly. His cold panic melts and simmers, and his head rushes with the roar of intoxicated, buried desires unearthing themselves from deep in his psyche. 

His voice is a choked whisper, “What the hell does that mean?”

“I think you know.” Holden says, his mouth tipping with a coy smirk. 

Bill’s mouth moves wordlessly as he searches for his gumption, his disgust, his anger. Any one of those reactions had been easily attained moments ago before Holden climbed on top of him and nearly choked him into unconsciousness. Now he can’t seem to think past the smothering fog creeping across his brain. 

As he goes limp, Holden straightens and releases Bill’s throat from under his forearm. Settling down comfortably on Bill’s groin, he reaches up to open the front of the robe. The velvet fabric slides from rounded, pale shoulders and exposes his smooth, bare chest, his pectorals just slightly plump and puckered with fat, pink nipples. 

Bill breathes hard through his nose, searching for the will to protest. Eventually, it comes out in a soft whine, “How do you … how do you even know I’m- … that I-”

“Enjoy the company of men?” Holden asks, smugly. 

Bill’s face goes hot with humiliation, but he nods. 

“I’ve perfected this form.” Holden says, unlacing the belt of the robe. “I know exactly what you want before you even know it. And I can see how much you yearn for this young man’s flesh, his tight little asshole that you can ram your cock into and take out all your frustrations with the world.” 

Bill’s mouth slips open in a breathless gasp as the robe departs Holden’s shoulders entirely. The fabric pools behind him, across Bill’s thighs. He’s entirely naked beneath the robe, and his cock is hard and twitching from between his creamy legs and dark pubic hair, the only hair that he seems to have on the smooth curves and planes of his body. 

“Isn’t that right?” Holden murmurs, running a hand down his chest and over one hard nipple. 

Bill tries to force his mouth shut. He nods vehemently, suddenly struck with a need so deep and compelling that the ache in his groin is all at once startling and agonizing. 

“Perhaps I’ll let you.” Holden murmurs. 

He retrieves Bill’s limp hand from the sheets, and guides it up to cradle his chest. On contact, he tilts his head back and sighs aloud in pleasure. 

Bill’s palm is rough against the soft swell of his chest, pawing indelicately at creamy skin that seems to slip like satin beneath his fingers. He catches the perky nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and gives it a viscous twist. 

“You’ll  _ let  _ me, huh?” Bill growls, pushing up from the sheets to meet Holden’s cocky stare. 

“Oh, yes, like that.” Holden murmurs, rocking his hips as Bill roughly handles his tender skin. “Oh, harder.”

Bill raises his other hand from the bed sheets to pinch and pull at both nipples. 

Holden whimpers, and wraps his arms around Bill’s neck to draw them closer. His breath is hot, faintly smoky against Bill’s cheek. 

“Oh, yes.” He sighs, happily despite Bill’s coarse touch. “You’re good at this, hmm? Taking control, leaving bruises …”

Bill leans back to catch Holden’s unnerving, red stare, feeling the acid burn of anger and shame rising up in his gut. He grabs Holden by the throat, and throws him back against the sheets. Holden doesn’t protest even as Bill scrambles between his open thighs, and pins him down, wrapping both hands around his neck. 

“Oh, Bill, you’re so strong.” He whispers, hoarsely, tilting his neck open to Bill’s grasp. 

“Is this what you wanted from me?” Bill demands, giving him a shake. “Huh? What kind of sick creature are you? What kind of fucked-up-”

Before he can finish the desperate interrogation, Holden is out from underneath him. Bill doesn’t know how it’s even possible, but one moment he has his fists wrapped around his soft, pale throat and the next Holden has flipped their positions. Bill’s back slams into the bed sheets once more. They’re so close to the edge of the bed that his head tilts over the mattress, leaving his neck open and exposed to Holden’s grip. 

“No, Bill, this is what I want.” Holden says, sounding both triumphant and nonplussed by the physical struggle. 

Bill claws at Holden’s hand wrapped around his throat to no avail as the creature compresses his grip just hard enough that black edges his vision.

“I wanted a challenge.” Holden continues, calmly. “I get so tired of treading the earth each new year for the two days that I’m allowed, ensnaring humans that are never capable of climbing onto my back. It’s always the same - a boring chase. They’re all so banal and typical and uninspiring. Some of them are far too eager to be playing games with such a dangerous creature like myself. I don’t like those ones, Bill. The overeager ones. I’m just a story they can tell their friends, an experience they can brag about. You’re not going to brag about this. No, you’re going to keep it to yourself for years to come. You’ll never tell anyone the way I took you, the way I put you on your back, bred you, made you mine.”

The horror and unbidden desire clash in Bill’s belly. He goes still underneath Holden as the claim processes in his mind, and his body reacts - God, how it reacts so violently, with such deep volition and compulsion that he whimpers in humiliation at the hot, wet tremble of arousal he feels ooze from his every orifice. 

“That’s right.” Holden says, smiling devilishly at the look of confoundment on Bill’s face, “I’m going to fuck you. Again and again. Until you can’t take it anymore. Until I’m satisfied.”

“Please …” Bill whispers, his voice echoing inside his head as if from down a long hallway. 

His chest is tight with desperation. He’s never wanted anything more in his life though he doesn’t remember where the humiliating desire came from. If it had existed long before this trip to Belfast or if Holden had somehow magically implanted it in his brain is inconsequential. The only thing that matters is moving things along, getting out of his boxers which are suffocating, getting Holden’s touch on his bare, throbbing skin, getting his beautiful, hard cock inside. 

“Yes?” Holden asks, eagerly. 

“Like you’re waiting for me to say yes.” Bill bites out, “You’re going to do it whether I like it or not.”

“But I’d prefer for you to like it.” 

Bill looks away, and presses his eyes shut. He can hardly believe he’s about to consent to some other man - this creature, this beast - penetrating him. If this is still yet a dream, it is of the most visceral and nastiest sort. A nightmare. An erotic, intoxicating nightmare. 

Anita’s voice echoes in his head:  _ Be careful of what you dream.  _

“Yes,” He breathes out. “Please …” 

The appeal keeps trickling out of him in staggered bursts, little whimpers of need when Holden strips him out of his boxers that evolve to raspy encouragement as Holden forces his knees open and up against his chest. 

Situating himself between Bill’s raised ankles, Holden glowers down at him with a pleased smile that reveals fanged teeth. He drags his hands down Bill’s sternum and ribs, and hums a sigh of satisfaction. 

“You are a pleasing human.” He says, licking his lips appreciatively. “And I’ve had a lot of humans, Bill.”

Bill wants to say that he’s had a lot of boys like Holden, but while this creature may fit the appearance of some of the young pieces of ass he’s had the pleasure of bending over cheap motels sheets, the true nature of it defies anything that walks this earth. Quickly, any thought of ten dollar blow jobs and whores playing cock-hungry disappears from his mind. 

Holden cradles Bill’s twitching, leaking cock in his hand, and pumps it lazily at just the right speed to make Bill’s body clamp and shudder with the thought of orgasm. 

“Oh God …” Bill groans out, grabbing at fistfuls of the sheets in vain attempt to slow down the arousal scorching through him. 

“Mm, look at you.” Holden murmurs, seeming unconcerned that he could tip Bill over the edge before the “breeding” has even begun. He uses his other hand to encircle Bill’s testicles, giving them a slight tug. “Such a fine specimen.”

Bill tries to breathe through his nose and keep his mouth clamped shut against the bubbling cries, but he only manages to whine desperately past his nostrils. He squirms helplessly while Holden massages his cock and balls thoroughly, dragging him to the brink of orgasm before easing off again. 

“Oh, fuck …” Bill groans, casting a hazy glance downward to glimpse his cock dripping with tortured pre-cum. The threat of orgasm weighs heavily in his groin, but Holden seems to hold the urge in the palm of his hand the same as everything else that has occurred this night. 

Holden clicks his tongue, softly. “Oh, you want to cum very badly, don’t you?” 

Bill has no choice but to answer. “Yes. Please. I can’t take it. Please-”

“Yes you can. You can take so much more. You  _ will _ .”

“No, please …” 

He’s lost his mind. Not sure where or when. But he’s lost it because he’s never been this hard in his life, never been this close to orgasm without achieving it, and the urge is so intense yet stifled that he thinks he’ll go mad if the pressure doesn’t abate in just a few seconds. 

“Shh-shh,” Holden soothes, stroking his cheek gently. “I’m going to fuck you now, and you’re not going to cum.”

Holden lifts his thighs to his chest, and rubs his cockhead across Bill’s cleft. Somehow it’s all wet down there, the glaze of some gushing, sticky lubricant easing the passage of Holden’s swollen, pulsing cock against his quaking hole. 

Bill writhes as just the gentle graze of flesh against him makes his aching, needy body scream in agony. 

“Jesus … God-” He chokes out, opening fuzzy eyes to glimpse Holden leaning over him. 

He feels the pressure of the hard, engorged cock going into him, filling the tight recesses of his body like it’s a wet, open cunt rather than his untried, virginal asshole. The raw weight of it delving into him is so intensely pleasurable that stars break out across his vision and the room all but disappears around them. All he can focus on is Holden’s cock thrusting into his asshole, searching down to the hilt with every blow, finding him limp, gaping, quivering with desperation. 

“Please … please-” Bill hears himself chanting, but he may have only been thinking it. 

Even so, Holden hears him, and casts him an almost fond smile. “Shh, relax. Enjoy the ride. You’re not going to cum.”

Bill swipes a delirious fist as Holden bends over him, but his knuckles glance over Holden’s shoulder with little affect. He pushes the heels of both hands into his chest, and turns his face away, exhaling a choked grunt. 

“Shh,” Holden murmurs again, gently turning Bill’s face back toward him. “I didn’t say you were never going to cum.”

“Please …” Bill wheezes out, too feverish with mounting arousal for anything more noble. “It aches … it hurts. Please-”

Holden kisses him hard on the mouth, silencing the foolish rambling. He never strays from his persistent thrusting. Bill can hear Holden’s hips clapping against his backside even as he’s taken under by the sweet, aphrodisiacal saliva in his mouth. 

It acts like a sedative, mildly intoxicating. He’s lucid enough to respond to Holden’s cock rutting into him, but not strong enough to resist it when Holden teases his cock with a pair of feathery fingertips. He can only writhe in silent, breathless agony while the pleasure crests and falls, swells and retreats. Three times - maybe more - he’s certain he’s going to cum, that he’ll explode with semen and relief across Holden’s wicked fingers; but Holden strips the possibility from him each and every time with a whispered reminder.  _ Don’t cum. Don’t cum. I’m going to fuck you and fill you with my cum until I’m satisifed - then you’re going to have the most spectacular orgasm of your life.  _

Bill doesn’t know why he has to listen, or how his body even manages to obey when every biological reaction and ingrained physical response is telling him otherwise. 

But he doesn’t cum. 

And Holden climaxes inside him with a string of gasping, blissful cries. His hips spasm against Bill while he releases, and his mouth presses hot to Bill’s throat. When it subsides, he goes still with his body draped over Bill’s chest. 

“Oh, that was incredible.” He whispers, nuzzling a kiss to Bill’s neck and ear. “You humans have such amazing bodies. So tactile and sensitive. If I lived in this dimension all of the time, I don’t see how I wouldn’t be addicted to such delight.”

Bill doesn’t respond. His brain is wading through a sea of fog, and he can’t think beyond the persistent need for release; but all the same, he cannot move. His body feels weighed down to the sheets, still and submissive, simply awaiting the revival of Holden’s cock to be used and fucked once more. 

Holden gathers himself upright from Bill’s chest, and leans back on his heels. His cheeks are glowing with a lively flush. If it were possible - and it could have been a figment of Bill’s imagination - his red eyes burn hotter and brighter in the darkness of the room, color spilling past his lashes and creeping like narrow rivulets of blood along his temples. 

“You find me a cruel beast, don’t you?” He asks, his tongue flicking against his lower lip. 

“Yes,” Bill whispers, his voice raw as if he’s been screaming. Maybe he was and he just doesn’t remember it. “I’ve sat in a room with evil, looked it in the eye … None of them came close to you.”

Holden chuckles, his head tilting back in amusement. When the burst of laughter ends, he sobers quickly, and cocks his head. “Now you know what I’m capable of. Now you fear me.”

Bill squirms uncomfortably beneath him. He can feel the cum inside of him, dripping out of him. It only makes his cock pulse harder in dull, trapped agony. 

“I don’t know if I would call it fear.” He says. 

“A healthy respect?”

“No …”

“I see.” Holden says, his voice taking on that careful approach the way Wendy does when she asks him if he’s okay, if he’s gotten enough rest or fed himself. He rolls Bill over onto his stomach, and bends to press a row of tickling kisses to the back of his neck. “You’ve never been vulnerable with anyone. You’ve never begged. Never submitted. Never given everything to another human.”

Bill digs his fingers into the bed sheets, and tries to search for some will left in his gut to resist. As soon as he pushes up with that tiny scrap of strength, Holden forces him back down again. Bill exhales a grunt when he gets a faceful of the pillow, a stiff hand on the back of his neck. 

“I picked the right challenge, I think.” Holden continues, easing Bill’s thighs open across the sheets, “A man who doesn’t want anyone to think he feels anything - but he does. He feels everything  _ so much _ and it’s killing him that he can’t let it out. It’s eating him alive from the inside.”

Bill seizes as Holden’s touch works along his inner thigh and in between his asscheeks. 

“Mmm …” Holden groans, swirling his fingers into the slick mess of release and lubricant oozing from Bill’s raw hole. “I can feel you quivering, opening for me, begging for more.”

“No …” Bill groans into the pillow, and tries to twist away from the caress against oversensitized skin. 

“Oh, yes.” 

“Please-”

Holden crawls between his legs, ignoring the desperate, raspy plea. Grasping Bill’s hips, he guides him up onto his knees with his face still buried in the pillow. 

“I’m going to fuck that notion right out of your brain.” Holden says, and his cock is hard against Bill’s hole again. “No more resisting, no more burying it. Okay, Bill? I want you to let it out. Scream and cry if you want to. Fight me. Whatever makes you feel better.”

“What kind of demon are you?” Bill groans, bracing his hands around the headboard of the bed as Holden’s cock presses into him. 

“I’m not a demon.” 

Bill chokes on his next retort as Holden’s cock slides in to the hilt, pressing hard and blunt against his engorged, aching prostate. His mouth stretches open in a hollow, breathless cry, and it stays frozen like that until Holden launches into a steady rhythm that all but rends him in two. The impact seems to jostle the keening shout from the back of his throat, a mangled and rusty sound that’s been locked away beneath his breastbone for far too long. 

“That’s it, that’s it.” Holden urges. 

He takes Bill by the hair, and pulls his head back like he’s a mounted colt, reigned back into submission, broken in, ridden hard. Bill bucks like one, too, hips rocking to and fro from the impaling force of Holden’s cock, but always returning at just the right moment to bring them slamming into one another. 

He hates the way his body thrills at the fiercest impact - he  _ wants  _ to hate it; but while the fragmented remnants of his pride still endure, the rest of him, the most important parts of him, are screaming with lust and satisfaction. His cock bobs rock hard and tortured between his thighs. A simple glance downward exposes just how severe this condition is that Holden has put him into; he’s engorged, red, and angry, the veins pulsing widely to the surface with a bruised, purple hue, and the tip dribbles with clear bursts of pre-cum so much so that he doesn’t know how he hasn’t actually climaxed yet. It just keeps straining out of him, a dull ache like a papercut - superficial but bleeding and bleeding. 

And then there’s his voice. He can hear it, but he can’t control it. It sounds to him like crying; his version of crying anyway. Groaning, shouting, pitching a fit of anger so that he doesn’t have to break down into tears. But he wants to. God, how he wants to just collapse and let Holden’s touch take him away into a place of complete submission and bliss. 

_ So let it.  _ The thought crosses his mind. It seems easy enough. It would be if he wasn’t so goddamn aware that he’s bent over like a prostitute with his knees planted wide and his asshole gaping eagerly for a hard, thrusting cock. Not quite a cock because Holden isn’t human, but Holden’s curated version of the perfect cock; and yes, it does feel quite perfect fitting deep into his body as if it had been matched to the mold, finding places that no one else has ever touched, and breaking him down bit by bit with every impact against his prostate. 

“Oh, oh-” Holden chokes out from behind him. His thrusts begin to stagger as he gets himself closer and closer to orgasm. “Oh, Bill, yes!”

Bill squeezes his eyes shut as Holden cums once more, pumping him full of a fresh load of release that seems even more copious than the first time. His broken, shuddering thrusts push the excess from within Bill’s body, and he feels it running down his thighs in hot, sticky rivers. The sensation triggers a shiver down his spine, into the soles of his feet and the tips of his fingers. The urge to cum is so intense that he’s momentarily nauseous with desperation. 

As Holden pulls out of him, Bill sinks down against the sheets into a shuddering fetal position. His trembling hand reaches for his cock. Just one stroke and he’s done, he thinks. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Holden demands, grabbing him by the wrist to yank his hand away. 

“Fuck, please …” Bill groans, “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because I enjoy it.”

“You fucking twisted sick bastard-”

Holden chuckles delightedly as he secures both of Bill’s wrists above his head. He lays himself halfway on top of Bill’s chest, and brings his face so close to Bill’s that their noses brush. 

“I have two days every year, Bill.” He whispers, “Two days where the veil between your world and mine is so thin that I can manifest myself to you the way I am right now. The rest of the year, I have to watch you and the rest of the little humans scurrying across the planet with no recognition that we are but a breath away. I’ve always loved your people. So desperate and flailing and sincere. I want to do everything with you that I can before I have to leave again. You could not match every single time I can make this human form cum. It’s not physically possible. I need you aroused and wanting my cock for the rest of the night. If I let you cum, your incentive disappears.”

“No, it won’t. I’ll stay. I’ll let you stay with me. I’ll do whatever you want, just let me …” Bill babbles, not quite believing everything he’s saying but desperate enough to promise it. 

Holden kisses him on the mouth, ending the delirious plea with that same sweet elixir on his tongue that he’d used to bring Bill into submission before. 

Bill can only manage to resist it for a few seconds before the drugged haze settles in. He can feel it infiltrate his brain and his muscles, dampening every violent and forceful impulse, urging out only the submissive and willing needs that Holden is feeding off of. He goes limp against the sheets as Holden’s mouth breaks away from his, traveling down his cheeks, chin, and throat. 

He floats in a daze where that impatient need to climax is but a dull buzz in the back of his mind. Meanwhile, Holden kisses what feels like every inch of his body, planting the burning hum of his saliva everywhere, lingering especially hard at his nipples, his inner thighs, the insoles of his feet. Compliant tears leak from the corners of his eyes when Holden crawls back up again, rolls him over onto his side, and presses up behind him. 

When Holden’s cock rubs up against him once more, Bill’s mouth shudders open in a trembling cry. His hole is so raw and tender that the thick girth of Holden entering him rakes across his nerve-endings like fire. 

Earlier in the night, he would have resisted. He would have shouted and kicked, and demanded to be given a break or some type of release. Now he can’t muster a single word, barely a faint groan from the back of his throat as Holden rocks into him. 

It’s almost gentle this time though he would have never described being fucked in the asshole in such terms before tonight; but Holden wraps his arms around him, and pulls him close into the cradle of his chest. His breath is warm and intoxicating at Bill’s ear, the rhythmic sound of his steady breathing dragging Bill away like the sound of ocean waves. He sinks into it, arches back, digs his toes into the silky mass of the sheets to meet Holden’s eager thrusts. 

_ More. More. More.  _ The thought pounds across the back of his mind. He can’t speak it, but Holden has invaded his body, mind, and heart. He crawls inside Bill’s brain, into the dark, shuttered recesses, kicks aside the masculine facades of anger, brutality, resistance, to find the trembling core where he’s soft like a sheep’s tender underbelly, ready for the slaughter. 

Bill loses track of time for the rest of the night. He can’t differentiate between one round of sex or the next, and he has no idea how many times Holden fucks him and fills him with hot, liberal loads of cum. He’s lost his will to fight it, and now that he’s given in, he doesn’t know why he had resisted in the first place. 

The pleasure is so protracted and immense, so all-consuming, so much better than any coarse rutting in cheap hotels that he’s experienced to manage his shameful, homosexual tendencies. This is something different, something powerful. Not reality, but not a dream either; something transcending the borders of the earth. 

Holden is between his legs, gazing down at him with those red, red eyes - and they must be in the midst of the tenth round, or maybe the twentieth because he has no idea anymore - when he whispers, “Ready?”

“For what?” Bill mumbles. 

He’d almost forgotten Holden’s promise. 

Then, he cums. 

It explodes inside him like a shockwave, a seizing, spasming burst of sensations so intense and gripping that all he sees is blinding white for several long moments. He thinks he’s leaving his shuddering body, floating somewhere towards the sky, but he can feel every sparking, overloaded nerve-ending trapped in his flesh experiencing the most consuming assault of climax that he’s ever had. 

The orgasm seems to last a small eternity. When Bill finally collapses back down against the sheets, his lungs are gasping for air as if he’d nearly drowned, and his body could have been scattered into a hundred pieces if he hadn’t opened his eyes to see that he’s still completely intact. 

“How was it?” Holden whispers, stroking his sweat-damp hair. 

“In-incredible …” Bill chokes out, barely able to move to jaw to speak the word. 

Holden kisses him on the brow, his cheeks, and his mouth. 

“Thank you …” He whispers. 

“For what?”

“For giving yourself to me. This has been the most pleasing night of my existence.”

Bill forces his heavy eyelids to lift, and look up at Holden’s face. The fiery burn of his eyes has faded down into an ombre glow. If a creature of the underworld could look sad, this must be what it looks like. 

“I don’t have long,” Holden says, withdrawing himself from Bill’s side, “Perhaps an hour. I should go.” 

“Wait,” Bill says, the fuzzy veil across his mind splitting freshly open. “Go? Now?”

“Yes, I must return to the gate.”

Bill doesn’t know what gate Holden means, but he currently doesn’t give a shit where he’d come from or where he’s going. His overstimulated body is aching from the sudden lack of touch after hours of friction and warmth. 

“Didn’t they teach you manners in the Underworld?” 

Holden’s eyebrow arches. “Manners?”

“Yeah, you don’t fuck someone within an inch of their life, and then just walk away.”

“I see.” Holden says, creeping back across the sheets to where Bill is indignantly pushing up onto his elbows. “So you’re asking me to stay here with you? Willingly?”

Bill scowls, and glances away. He’s too exhausted and overworked to argue. Instead, he sinks back down against the sheets on his side, and quietly catches Holden by the waist to draw him closer. 

Holden tentatively puts his arm around Bill’s shoulders. 

Tucking his forehead against Holden’s chest, Bill presses his eyes shut. A sigh unwinds from deep inside his body, the last of his resistance escaping. He feels like he could sleep for a year. 

“I have to say, Bill, you were even more of a challenge than I first thought … But it was well worth it.” Holden's voice sounds like it’s coming from the end of a long, long hallway, perhaps from another dimension. “In the next new year, I will remember you.” A quiet laugh, not quite so amused as bewildered, “I don’t think I couldn't. I think that I will think of you between now and then quite frequently …”

Bill is already half-asleep, falling down a deep, dark hole into exhaustion and oblivion. He hardly registers what Holden said except somewhere in the back of his mind that is still convinced this entire night was a dream. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's so hard for me to let an idea go after just one chapter so here's chapter 2 of this fic than no one asked for haha We'll see where it goes from here. Enjoy 🖤

Bill wakes warm and sore. 

The window is latched shut against the frosty chill hanging in the air of this first day of November, but the sky is crisp blue, allowing unobstructed passage of radiant sunlight past the filmy curtains to the bed where he’s curled on his side with the blankets tangled around his limbs. 

When his eyes first open to the light, there’s perhaps three seconds in which he doesn’t recall any details from the previous night; only when he begins to move does the protesting ache that stuns him from head-to-toe shake loose every intense, breath-taking memory. 

Sitting bolt upright, Bill shoves the blankets back to survey his trembling body. Dried semen is crusted on his belly and pubic hair, but the powdery mess is only a fraction of the damages. Bruises flower in shades of black and purple across the undersides of his thighs, his hips, wrists, and throat. Speckled vermillion hickeys follow a scattered pattern down his neck and chest, clustering at his nipples, and layering over the bruises on his legs. His ribs and chest bear long, red scratches, and he doesn’t even want to know what state his back is in. He can feel the sting across his shoulder blades without even looking. 

Horrified yet paralyzed by the rush of memory, Bill sinks back against the stained bed sheets, and rubs both hands over his face. He thought he’d dreamt it. Or imagined it. Or been hypnotized into believing it. Seeing every lewd mark left on his flesh, he can’t deny the reality of what happened. 

Slipping his hands under the sheets, he feels carefully between his thighs, and bites back a breathless whine when he grazes his raw, aching hole. Lingering moisture oozes from within him, a condition he’s going to be dealing with for the next few days if he doesn’t do something about it. 

The gentle probing triggers a dull pulse in his groin, and he yanks his hand away to bite at his knuckles. Squeezing his eyes shut, he grinds his front teeth into bone until it hurts, but he can’t force down the thundering arousal swelling with unmitigated ferocity at the slightest memory of Holden fucking him. 

He wonders if he’s still under the influence of that salivary aphrodisiac somehow as his hand sinks down to gather up his cock. He can’t seem to stop himself. The magnetic pull of need in his groin is too powerful. 

As he strokes desperately at his cock, his eyes fall shut over a parade of sense memory that tumbles through his mind. A lot of what happened is fuzzy and disjointed, but a few moments gleam like copper pennies in the bottom of a wishing well, distinct and shimmering. He remembers Holden making him get on his knees, telling him to scream or cry. He remembers the kisses down his body, the biting and sucking at his nipples until they were both raw and hurting. The long, sweaty grind of their bodies against one another later into the night when Holden’s wild, untamed desires had simmered down into a manageable burn. And God, the way Holden had touched him, teasing his cock but never letting him cum until the very end. It was the sweetest torture he’s ever experienced. 

Bill’s eyes spring open as the hot, tingling tide of orgasm swells between his thighs and brings him back into the present moment of the morning sunlight and the vacant hotel room. His back snaps into a taut arch as he comes hard, shooting forceful ribbons of release across his already soiled belly and chest. He’s left panting and dizzy, squinting up at the popcorn ceiling with delirious satisfaction and dwindling shame clashing in his chest. 

He lays still for another ten minutes before looking at the clock. 

It’s well past noon. He wonders how long Holden stayed. He can’t remember now if it had been still a pitch black night or dawning sunrise when he left. It felt as if they had gone on for days. 

Eventually, he drags himself out of the bed, and limps to the bathroom. Every move aches. 

Avoiding the mirror, he climbs into the shower, and turns the water on hot. In the Army, they had taught him to take quick but thorough showers; he follows that same method, trying not to pay too much attention to his body while he scrubs himself raw and pink. He tries to do what he can about the excess of semen drizzling out of him, but he’ll have to stop at the store. 

_ Great. Buying an anal douche in Belfast is exactly how I figured I’d be spending my vacation.  _ He thinks, but his own sarcastic humor doesn’t rouse even the slightest amusement. 

He dresses in slacks and a turtleneck to hide the bruising around his neck, and goes downstairs to the lobby. As he approaches the desk to ask the clerk directions to the nearest pharmacy, she greets him. 

“Hi. It’s Bill, right?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Your friend called for you.” She says, extending a Post-It note with Jim’s name and number written on it, “Three times.”

“Shit.” He mutters, accepting the note. “Do you know where the nearest pharmacy is?”

“That would be McAnnally’s.” She says, “Take a left out of here, go down three blocks, take another left. It’s on the corner.”

“Thanks,” Bill mutters. 

As he turns to leave, the clerk says, “Your friend was pretty worried about you, mister.”

_ With good reason,  _ His brain supplies. 

“I’ll make sure to give him a call,” He says, instead. 

Exiting the hotel, he walks directly to McAnnally’s. He doesn’t even consider taking a taxi since the thought of sitting for any extended period of time is unpleasant. The brief exercise is good for his overused muscles anyway, he consoles himself.

At the pharmacy, he purchases a bottle of water, Ibuprofen, ice packs, and after a lot of deliberation and pacing the aisle with humiliation curling in his gut, the douche. He takes it all to the counter, and has to wait behind an old woman in line that’s insistent upon telling the clerk her entire life story. During the account about her cat getting out - and it’s a black cat so she was extremely worried for his safety during Halloween night - Bill thinks about making a run for the door with items in hand so that he doesn’t have to face paying for the douche. Of course, such a course of action would lead to the possibility of a shoplifting arrest - then he would have to explain to police officers why he, a visiting American who is also an FBI agent, tried to steal a douche from the pharmacy. 

“Can I help you?” The clerk’s impatient, nasally voice jolts Bill out of his reverie. 

He clears his throat, and shuffles forward to place the items on the counter. He doesn’t look up as the man scans each purchase and drops it into a plastic bag. When he gets to the douche, he turns it over in search of the barcode and Bill wants to sink through the floor. 

By the time the cashier tells him his total, his face is so hot that he must be catching flame. He pulls out his wallet with trembling fingers, and hands over the money. The moment he has his change and the bag, he rushes back out the door, ignoring the cashier’s farewell to “have a blessed day.” 

  
  
  


Bill grabs a sandwich and coffee from the shop down the road, and pops three Ibuprofen with the bottled water he got at the pharmacy on his way back to the hotel. A few stiff sips of the black coffee, and he tells himself he’s going to be fine. 

_ Fine.  _ The word doesn’t even begin to describe how he feels, but it’s what he always tells himself to keep going.  _ Fine. Everything is going to be fine.  _

Yes. Fine. And he had sex with a creature of the Underworld last night. Maybe “with” isn’t the right phrasing. He was fucked mercilessly, and made not to cum for hours. 

Trying to put it from his mind, Bill returns to the safety of his hotel room where he locks the door, and carries the plastic bag into the bathroom. He unpackages the douche, and feels incredibly naïve reading the directions. 

As someone who’s partaken in gay sex more than a few times, he should be acquainted with the consequences; but he’d had no place to accuse Holden of lacking manners last night. It’s his MO - fuck and walk away before the cuddling and intimacy can begin. 

If that smug, red-eyed beast were standing in the bathroom with him right now, watching him lay down a towel over the cold tile, and get facedown on his knees, he would likely be crowing, “Challenge complete!” Because that’s what Holden was trying to do - break him down into nothing. 

Sitting on the toilet, letting the water and stale release drain out of him, Bill feels as close to nothing as he’s ever felt; but this helpless feeling inside his chest isn’t anything like the childhood rage of watching his father hit his mother or backing into a corner to escape the lick of the belt. It isn’t like the war when his friends died around him. It isn’t like his wedding day when he knew it was what he had to do to lead a normal, respectable life, and it isn’t like the day they adopted Brian - the last brick and mortar wall of his heterosexual façade of husband and father set in place, trapping him inside. No, he had gotten so used to that barrier surrounding him, it’s rough edges and razor wire keeping anyone from getting close to him, that having that protection abruptly removed is more than unnerving - it’s terrifying. 

In the course of just one night, he thinks that Holden magically read his mind, and spied every fearful, disgusted thought he’s ever harbored toward himself. That beast doesn’t apologize for anything because it doesn’t have the stereotypes of this world to hold it back from getting what it wants. It probably found his struggle amusing. So trivial. So silly in the Underworld. 

_ Well, up here it matters.  _ Bill thinks, grimly,  _ It means everything.  _

  
  


After he comes out of the bathroom, Bill calls Jim to assure him that he’s not dead in a ditch somewhere. 

“Sorry I didn’t call earlier. I was passed out cold. What the hell did you put in those drinks last night?” He asks, angling for nonchalance. 

“Genuine Irish whiskey.” Jim tells him. 

They hang up, and Bill thinks about calling Wendy. She usually can talk some sense into his head. Hand out some searing logic and cunning intuition. He could use some logic right about now, but he wonders if she might hear the tremble in his voice and realize that something isn’t right. 

Instead, he takes off his clothes because the fabric is weighing too heavily on his bruised, scratched, and bitten skin, and lays back down in bed. He turns on the TV to distract himself, but all too soon, he’s asleep again. Asleep and dreaming of a black horse running across an open field toward a massive stone gate. He tries to follow it, but the heavy wooden door slams in his face on the heels of the stallion. He’s alone in the empty field. 

He half wakes around three o’clock to the chatter of the midday game show on the television, but doesn’t feel any less tired than he had upon getting up this morning. Every microscopic fiber of his body languishes with taxed exhaustion. The Ibuprofen helped with the sore muscles, but the deepest areas of bruising are swollen and tender. He gets out of bed only long enough to retrieve the ice packs from the mini-fridge. Once he’s huddled beneath the sheets again with the ice packs laying over the backs of his thighs and his hips, he drifts back into another tumultuous dream, this one much closer to reality.

It comes in waves - the seductive whispers, touching, kissing, and fucking. Holden’s red eyes burning into him, peeling back the layers of pretense and machismo to glimpse the inside of his brains, and then reeling those irrepressible desires that long for submission and penetration from within him. His own body betraying him, quivering to every caress, suckle, and bite of the beast while it’s cock fucked him bare and raw. 

He wakes up hard again, groans in frustration as he touches himself to ease the ache. He can’t help it, and he wonders if he’s ruined for everything else. It doesn’t seem to matter because the need is so persistent and powerful right up until sweet release comes. 

As his eyes slip open to the gray light of afternoon beginning to shade the hotel room, he realizes that he’s only certain of one thing anymore - he needs to get Holden out of his mind. He just has no idea where to start. 

  
  
  


At last, around five-thirty in the evening, Bill’s intermittent napping rewards him with the return of some of his strength.

He takes more Ibuprofen, and orders room service. Dragging himself from the sheets, he puts on the fluffy, white robe provided by the hotel. When his dinner arrives, he opens the door just far enough to accept the tray before pushing it rapidly shut again. 

Most of the fog in his brain has seeped away, leaving him with the raw consequences of last night and his own compromised beliefs. Before arriving here, he hadn’t believed in spirits, or faeries, or the Underworld. He believed in evil he could see and touch. Men like Ted Bundy and Charles Mason. He’s forced into not only being a believer, but also more or less a poster child for a spiritual encounter gone wrong.

And if he’d been so terribly wrong about a fundamental aspect of the world, what else has he been wrong about? 

The dry sandwich lumps in the back of Bill’s throat as he thinks:  _ maybe his whole life has been a lie.  _

He breaks down and calls Wendy.

“Sorry to call you in the middle of the day.” He says after reaching her at work. 

“It’s okay. How’s vacation?”

“Uhh … introspective.”

“Introspective?”

Bill clears his throat. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the divorce - and my father.”

“Your father?” Wendy asks, softly. 

They’ve never spoken on this topic outside of their interview subjects. Bill doesn’t know about Wendy’s childhood, and she doesn’t know about his. It’s an unwritten rule. 

“Well, the study has shown us that the parents impress a great deal on our subjects. I think that’s true of us, too.”

“Yes, I would agree.”

“I guess I’m just realizing how much of me is him - and I wish I could be more of my mother because she was kind, and open-minded, and compassionate.”

“You’re those things, too.”

“No. No, I’m not Wendy. I’m angry and bitter. And I’ve tried to force myself into all of these tiny boxes and narrow criteria - all the things he wanted me to be. Expected me to be. I’ve never really lived up to them, but I’ve tried so fucking hard. Now I think I never wanted any of them, and I’ve wasted my life chasing after this idea of manhood that he physically beat into my brain almost every goddamn day.” 

Wendy is quiet for a long moment. “You sound upset. Are you okay?”

“No.” Bill whispers, clutching the phone tighter, and lowering his forehead to his hand. “No, I’m … I think I don’t know who I am - not really.”

“Because your marriage is over?”

“A little.”

“Because you didn’t live up to that standard you set for yourself? That everyone expects of you?”

“Well, yes …”

“That’s understandable.” Wendy says, gently. Then she clears her throat, and he hears her transition into the psychologist. “I cannot remember who I was when I was a child. Not really. We have small, bright memories, moments in time that we cannot really trust because our memories are not reliable. Our brains have a habit of extremes - remembering things for being better or worse than they were.”

“Some things were definitely worse.” 

“Then all we can do is rely on the verifiable facts. I can barely remember who I was ten years ago, but I know for certain I don’t want to be who I was five years ago. That definition is always changing. It’s never too late to shift your trajectory. It’s never too late to realize you want to fix something or put something in the past where it belongs. You don’t have to be the person you were five years ago either - you’re not even obligated to be the person you were yesterday.”

Bill rubs his hands over his eyes, dispelling moisture. He exhales a shaky laugh. 

“Shit, Wendy …”

“What?”

“Thank you. I needed to hear that.”

“You’re welcome.”

They’re quiet for a long moment, but Bill can sense her listening, the way she cocks her head when she’s reading his reticence like an open book. 

“Is there something else?” She asks, carefully. 

Bill presses his eyes shut against the memory of red eyes and a divinely wicked touch. He can’t explain to her what really happened. She might think that he was slipped some drugs. Or lost his mind entirely. 

“No,” He says, “That’s all. Thank you.”

After they hang up, he considers what she said - that he can be anyone he chooses to be. He must now be someone who believes in spirits, but does he have to be someone who invites them? There must be something he can do to make certain that his experience with Holden last night was a one-off, never to be repeated, and that with time, those memories will fade and cease to haunt him. 

He picks up the phone again, and dials the Barneys’ number. He’s relieved when Anita answers. 

“Oh, hi, Bill. Jim’s not here.” She says. 

“That’s okay. I was actually hoping to talk to you.”

“What’s going on?”

“Can we talk in person? I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Sure. But what’s this about?”

“What you told me last night.” Bill says, glancing down at the creases of his palm. “About my dreams coming true.”

Anita sounds intrigued when she agrees to meet up, and tells him she knows a place halfway between her house and the hotel where they can talk. 

Bill puts the turtleneck back on to meet her. He has no intention of revealing the whole truth - just enough to get some advice from someone who knows far more on the subject than he does. 

When he arrives at the pub Anita chose, she meets him on the sidewalk dressed in a loose-fitting, floor-length black dress and an oversized, fuzzy green coat. She stands out amongst the leather jackets and tartan mini-skirts of the Belfast scene - and both of them stand out beside the majority of fair-skinned youths no older than thirty. They find a booth toward the back of the pub and sit down opposite one another with beers between them. 

Anita places her Marlboro in a slim, black cigarette holder that she balances between slender, bejeweled fingers, and pins him with a discerning gaze. 

“So, your dreams …” She prompts as he stares down into his beer. 

“M-hmm.” He grunts, not meeting her gaze. 

“What was the dream, and what was the manifestation?”

“That’s the problem. I’m not entirely convinced it  _ wasn’t  _ all a dream.” Bill takes a stiff sip of his beer, and scans the youngsters packed at the bar conversing jovially. 

“Then tell me the dream.”

“It was a black horse.” Bill says, biting his lower lip. “Red eyes. Black chains around its neck. I first saw it the day I got here. I took a nap once I got to the hotel, and when I woke up, there was a street parade going past. I went down to watch, and it was there in the parade for a split second. When I noticed it, it disappeared.”

“I see. And you saw it again?”

“I dreamed about it that night. It spoke to me.”

“What did it say?”

“That it couldn’t be tamed or mounted. But it wasn’t a warning. It was a challenge.”

Anita meets his tentative gaze with narrowed, speculative eyes. He can see the conclusions turning in her mind. She knows all of the spirits and the lore. Undoubtedly, she’s already identified the creature that introduced himself as Holden, and he’s afraid to know the extent of what he encountered. 

“You said you weren’t certain what happened wasn’t a dream. Did you see it again?”

“Yes. After I left your and Jim’s party last night. I was walking by the water back to the hotel. I think I chased after it.”

“You think?”

Bill glances away, and rubs a hand over his flushing cheeks and jaw. He hates to admit to his own asinine behavior, but he needs help. Anita has no idea how much help he needs. 

“No. I know I did.” He whispers. 

“Is that all that happened?”

He presses his eyes shut, stomach turning. “Yes.”

“Hmm.”

He opens his eyes, and looks at her. She’s saying ‘hmm’ again as she had during the palm reading. This time, he doesn’t press her for honesty. 

Anita takes a sip of her beer, and casts him a bemused smile. “It sounds to me like Ciara was right. What you met on your journey back to the hotel sounds to me like a _púca_.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a faery, a creature of the Underworld. As far as mythology goes, there’s variations in every culture, but most stories about them remain the same across country borders.” 

“Like what?”

“Your experience, for example. The wild ride - or attempted ride - on a stallion’s back. If you had managed to climb aboard, the _púca_ would have taken you on a terrifying, exhilarating journey, but you would not have been harmed. They’re mischievous little creatures who enjoy playing tricks and having their fun with us mortals - but they aren’t malevolent.”

“They’re not?” 

“No,” Anita says, cocking her head, curiously. “Did your encounter include something malevolent?”

Bill wants to yank back the collar of his turtleneck, and demand,  _ What do you call these bruises if not malevolent?  _ But he can’t do that; and he can’t entirely convince himself that Holden meant him any harm by applying a little force to bring him under control. 

“I, uh .. well, I just didn’t appreciate being bated across all of Belfast for nothing.” Bill says, mustering his indignance. 

Anita chuckles, “No, of course not. They can be trouble-makers, that’s for certain; but they are bringers of good just as much as of mischief. For the most part, they are benevolent beings who want to help us. Historically, they’ve blessed farmers with good crops for the following year, warned of disease coming for their harvest, and led humans out of harm’s way.”

“Huh,” Bill grunts out. 

“Today is November 1st.” Anita points out, “Traditionally, it's the _púca’s_ day of the year in which they are expected to be on their absolute best behavior. Perhaps you will meet him again tonight, and have a better experience. They do love to chat, and have the ability to offer incredible prophecies and insights.”

“Meet it again?” Bill echoes, barely concealing how startled he is by the prospect. 

“Yes. It’s a very exciting thing to meet a creature of the Underworld during this time of year.” Anita says, her eyes shining. “If I’m being honest, I’m a bit jealous. I’ve tried to contact the spirit world for most of my life, but the messages I receive are so often shrouded in suggestion and inference. You met this creature face-to-face.”

“Well, believe me, you don’t want to meet this one.” Bill says, grimly, “And I sure as hell don’t want to meet it again. I came here so I could figure out how to keep it away from me for the rest of my time here in Ireland.”

Anita’s brow sinks with a worried frown. She reaches across the table with a soft hand to touch his arm. “Bill, are you okay? Was there something else you’re not telling me?”

Bill yanks his wrist away. “No, I’m fine. But I don’t want that  _ thing  _ \- whatever it is, _púca_ or not - fucking with me again. Isn’t there something you can do, or that I can do to - I don’t know - cleanse myself of that experience?”

Anita’s mouth purses worriedly, but she sits back in her seat. 

“Yes, there are some cleansing rituals that you can do if you would like to get rid of that spiritual energy. You can also acquire some talisman to carry with you. Iron usually does the trick. Or hematite - it’s a type of crystal that contains iron. Both work to ward off unwanted presences.”

“Great. Just tell me what I need to do.” 

Anita writes down the address of a local boutique that caters to the Wiccan community where he can find the items she’s suggested. Included beside the iron and hematite is a combination of four elements - salt, rosemary, sage, and bay laurel - that she explains he can use in a bath to cleanse himself of unwanted or negative spiritual energy. 

He listens intently to her directions, and thanks her profusely. After he pays for their beers, he leaves her outside the door of the pub. She asks him one last time if he’s okay, and he assures her he’ll be fine just as soon as he follows all of her suggestions. 

Following Anita’s directions to the shop, Bill tries not to think about what she had said beyond the cleansing rituals. The fact that she’d described the creature as some type of benevolent, if not charming faery isn’t just bewildering - it’s infuriating. He’d gone to the pub expecting her to back his frustrations and his horror, for her experience and respect for the spirit world to zap any kind of lingering warmth he might hold for the connection he’d made with Holden last night. Instead, she’d all but encouraged him to seek out another meeting tonight, the supposed night of the _púca’s_ good behavior. He can’t imagine Holden behaving. He’d seemed dedicated to his mischief and havoc. 

He’s so embroiled in his thoughts that, when he sees the shop ahead, he steps off the curb to cross the street without hardly looking both ways. Beyond the dull roar of vexation and dread in his mind, he hears the screech of tires and the blare of a horn, but he doesn’t have time to react beyond whirling about to face the oncoming car. 

He’s blinded by headlights, and paralyzed by panic and fear just before a powerful weight slams into his chest. Reeling, he smells the faint smoky burn of incense and an intoxicating sweetness just before they tumble to the sidewalk with a grunt. Despite the wild momentum of the fall, a pair of hands ease him back against the cold, coarse sidewalk with the gentility of a mother laying her babe to the cradle. 

Bill’s heart is pounding as he blinks his eyes open to the dull gray skies interrupted by a mess of auburn curls. 

“You should look both ways before you cross the street,” Holden reprimands despite the smile tilting his mouth. “That could have been ugly if I wasn’t right there.”

“Get off me!” Bill barks, shoving both hands into Holden’s chest. 

The young man leans back on his heels, and releases an indignant huff. “I just saved your life. You should be thanking me.”

Bill struggles to his feet with a tremble rippling through his limbs. “Thanks, but I’m fine now so you can leave me alone.”

Holden stands up, and adjusts a pair of sunglasses on his nose. He’s dressed to blend in with the crowd in a leather bomber jacket and black jeans. A red, silk shirt underneath is unbuttoned halfway down his chest to expose a pale triangle of hairless chest. 

Bill forces himself to look away from that glimmer of suggestion. 

“I don’t understand what you’re so upset about. I thought we had a good time last night.” Holden says, sounding like a kicked puppy. He probably has that “form perfected,” too. Bill doesn’t believe it for a second. 

“Yeah, and I know exactly what you are now.” Bill says, taking a threatening step closer. “Anita told me all about you. You’re just a little shit who likes to toy with people who are off their guard and vulnerable.”

“So you admit you were vulnerable?” Holden murmurs, tilting his sunglasses down to expose eyes that glimmer like embers. 

The sight of their red gleam sends a shiver down Bill’s spine. He takes an unsteady step back again. 

“I mean that I wasn’t prepared. You know, I like to do my research before I go into a room with a violent sex offender. Get a little background information, history of his crimes, pattern of abuse-”

“I don’t like what you’re implying.”

“You don’t like it?” Bill snaps. He hooks his fingers on the turtleneck, and tugs it down just far enough to show the bruising. “ _ This  _ looks pretty bad all on it’s own, don’t you think?”

“That happened because you weren’t listening to me.” Holden says, glancing away and biting his lip, softly. “You never would have let me in if I hadn’t applied a little force. And look how the night ended. You were so satisfied and happy. I could tell. I can always tell when a human is completely blissed-out. You get a certain look in your eyes, color on your cheeks. You had that look - total relief and pleasure-”

“You’re full of yourself, you know that?” Bill growls, jabbing a finger in Holden’s face, “You had a little bit of an advantage with your magic tricks and all. I didn’t really have a choice - or a chance, did I?”

Holden sighs, meekly. “No.”

Bill shakes his head, shame and anger boiling in his gut. “I thought you were leaving anyway. You said you had to get back to the gate.”

“I’m a creature of the night, Bill. I don’t flourish in the sunlight the way I do under the moon.”

“I see. So you thought you’d come back for more of the same tonight.”

“No, tonight I’m doing what I should. Helping you. And you see, I saved your life so I’m already on the right track.”

“Oh, and you sound so fucking happy to be doing ‘what you should’ - whatever the hell that means. I suggest you go “help” someone else. Someone who actually wants what you’re offering. I’m not drunk tonight, and I’m not falling for it. Leave me alone.”

Fuming, Bill turns to march away, but Holden reappears at his side once he gets to the end of the sidewalk. 

“You should listen to what I have to say. My prophecies have helped many of your people. I can tell you all about them. I have proof-”

“I don’t want you to prove anything to me. I want you to go away.”

“Bill, stop.” Holden’s tone takes on an edge of authority.

He puts himself directly in front of Bill, with a hand planted on his chest, forcing Bill to stop walking. They’re toe-to-toe, and Holden’s breath is both sweet and smoky against his cheeks, the same intoxicating ether that had dragged Bill’s head under again and again last night. 

“Listen,” Holden says, lowering his voice to a firm, yet gentle whisper. “If you keep going down this road you’re on, you’re going to ruin yourself.”

“What road?” Bill asks, trying to reinforce his anger. 

“You’re a very lonely man, Bill. That much is obvious. It doesn’t take a creature like me to identify someone in the process of turning himself into an alcoholic. You work yourself to death - and it’s not easy work. I know that you humans can only handle so much. You need rest, relaxation, time away from your jobs. You wither without warmth, sunlight, and intimacy. I can see it now. Between the work and the drinking, the loneliness and the bitterness, you’re killing yourself. Slowly but surely, you’re killing yourself.”

Bill swallows hard. A dull buzz rises in his ears. He can feel the pressure in his temples as his blood pressure spikes and swan dives, horror and realization crashing in his veins. 

Holden carefully takes off his sunglasses so that they can look one another in the eyes. Bill notices how the rest of the world seems to fade away, and the other pedestrians walk blindly past them as if they aren’t tethered to the real world anymore; but he can’t force himself to break out of the spell. 

“Don’t do this tonight,” Holden murmurs, uncurling Bill’s fingers that are clutching the napkin from the pub that Anita had written the cleansing rituals on. “Do it tomorrow if you feel that you must, but by that time, I will be gone. The veil between our worlds will thicken again, and you will only be able to reach me if you truly open yourself and try. I won’t be able to offer what I’m offering you again until next year. I won’t be able to help you or feel you … or touch you.”

Bill shudders as Holden cradles his cheeks between soft, warm palms. Closing his eyes, he draws in a slow breath, and tries to keep himself from crumbling to the suggestion. Where is his anger and his horror? The disgust he’d woken with this morning when he looked over his wrecked and bruised body? 

“Come with me …” Holden whispers, drawing him closer so that his mouth is almost touching Bill's ear.

Bill presses his quivering fists to Holden's chest, but he can't seem to break free of the delicate embrace.

“Please, don’t…” He rasps out, fighting the swimming fog settling over his brain, “I’m so sore. My body hurts. I can’t-”

“Shh, it’s not going to hurt. Trust me.”

Bill sinks forward. He thinks he’s going to hit the pavement again, but darkness settles just before he can experience any jolt of panic. Holden’s hands are on him, preventing him from falling. That’s all he remembers. 

  
  
  


Bill’s eyes drift open to the garish, geometric pattern of the wallpaper in his hotel room, and the fading golden and pink sunset just beyond the window. The pane is raised no more than an inch to allow in the cool gust of air and the smell of the river, but the blankets cocooning him protect him from the threat of a chill. The silky texture slides against his naked skin. 

Before Bill can startle at that realization, a quiet slurp draws his hazy focus over his shoulder. 

Holden is sitting in the bed beside him drinking a glass of milk and eating a fluffy pastry with some kind of red - maybe raspberry - filling. He’s undressed, too, blankets loose around his hips, but leaving little to the imagination with the luscious dip of his spine and swell of his backside exposed. 

“Where did you get that?” Bill asks, frowning at the pastry.

“You bought it for me.”

“I did?”

“Yes, but you don’t remember.” Holden says, munching happily on another bite of the dessert. His tongue pokes at the corner of his mouth to swipe away a dash of jelly. “I put a spell on you.”

“A spell …”

“Yes. It’s one of my many gifts. I could have put a spell on you last night, and you wouldn’t have remembered a thing.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Bill says, pushing up on his elbows to cast Holden a glare. “In retrospect, I would have appreciated it.”

“Well, I was going to, but then …”

“Then what?”

Holden sets the napkin with his pastry on it aside on the nightstand, and turns to face Bill. His eyes shimmer like rubies in the low light. 

“I thought we had something.” He whispers, putting a hand on Bill’s chest. “I thought you felt it, too.”

Bill pulls away from the caress, and rubs his hands over his face. 

“I must be tripping out.” He mutters into his palms. “Jesus Christ, this can’t be real.”

In the silence, Holden sighs impatiently. 

Bill yanks his hands from his face to cast him a glare. “How do I know this isn’t some kind of- of … I don’t know, elaborate scam - or joke? You could have slipped me something. This could all be fake, a-”

“This isn’t fake.” Holden says, appearing hurt by the suggestion.

“Oh, yeah? Then prove it to me.”

“You said you didn’t want proof.”

“You listen to me, you little shit-” Bill begins, reaching for Holden’s neck. 

Holden disappears from the bed before he can make good on the threat. In a split-second, he’s perched at the end of the bed in the compact yet riveting form of a raven spreading its wings out towards either post of the frame. Glowing red eyes pierce the shadows, and its black beak stretches open to release a shrill, ear-piercing shriek. 

“Jesus!” Bill shouts, slumping back against the headboard with his hand clutched to his pounding chest. 

With a flap of its wings, the raven launches off the bed frame, and performs a daring barrel roll through the air before shifting back into the form of a young man who lands deftly on his feet. Holden straightens, and plants his hands triumphantly on his hips. He’s completely naked but unaroused unlike last night - still, he’s like Michelangelo’s  _ David  _ in form, the perfect specimen of a young man with all the right musculature and curves, the pretty set of genitals emerging from lush curls. 

“Is that proof enough?” He asks archly. 

Bill stares, his mouth frozen halfway open. The horse figure was imposing, but seeing Holden shift between animal and human form is irreversibly daunting to his fracturing beliefs. 

Holden chuckles, and saunters back to the bed. Crawling across the sheets, he tentatively lifts his leg over Bill’s lap. When Bill doesn’t protest, he straddles him, and bends to stroke Bill’s cheek and gaping lips. 

“Now will you listen to me?” He murmurs, “I don’t want to hurt you, Bill; I want to help you. I want to show you the way out of this darkness that has blinded you, that has led you to places that hurt you and make you unhappy.”

“How …” Bill chokes out, clutching at Holden’s bare hips, “... how do you know where I’ve been?”

“I told you, I know everything about you…”

“How?”

“Magic.” Holden whispers, wagging his eyebrows and laughing softly. “Just trust me-”

“You keep saying that.”

“You have a scar on the back of your right thigh, just below your ass cheek.”

Bill frowns up at him. “You could have seen that last night.”

“And I did, but I know how old it is. I know you got it when you were ten years old, and your father hit you with the buckle end of his belt.”

The familiar rush of heated anger and humiliation floods Bill’s cheeks, but he can’t move, can only cling tighter to Holden’s body. 

“I know there’s another scar on your forehead - right here.” Holden continues, running his fingertips along the left side of Bill’s forehead at his hairline. “You were in a car accident when you were 17, hit your head off the steering wheel. You could have died right there.”

Bill closes his eyes. Every whispered secret brings back buried memories, the most painful moments of his life. 

“You ended your football career right there.” Holden murmurs, “Fractured collarbone, torn rotator cuff, a lot more. You spent the next few years thinking everything would have been different if you’d just called a cab instead of trying to drive home buzzed. Of course, this was all before you joined the Army just to get out of your parent’s house. Before Korea. Before you knew what a real scar felt like.”

Bill opens his eyes again, and Holden’s red eyes are mere inches away. All at once, he wants to cry and scream. He wants to tell Holden that he’s right, that his whole life is nothing except a series of stupid mistakes that ended in scar tissue and disappointment. 

Instead, he swallows down the acid bile in the back of his throat and musters defensiveness. 

“I have a lot of scars. Are we going to spend all night talking about them?”

“No; but I do know that you could have ended up with a lot more scars if I hadn’t pulled you off the road earlier today.”

“So … what do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything from you. Nothing except for you to stay here with me tonight, and stop hating yourself for one day in your life.”

“I don’t  _ hate  _ myself; I’m just-"

“Unhappy with your choices?” 

“Yes.”

“And the way things have ended with Nancy?”

“Let’s not talk about her.”

“Well, you should have never been with her,” Holden continues, briskly, ignoring Bill’s suggestion, “You’re really so unhappy because deep down, you don’t like women at all. Not like  _ that _ .”

“That isn’t true.”

“Oh, yes it is. You’ve just been telling yourself that it isn’t for so long that you actually believe it. You’re so ashamed of these impulses.” Holden says, waving a hand between them. “I could have taken whatever figure I wanted. I could be a woman right now. I could be the sexiest woman you could ever meet with the biggest breasts and the tightest pussy - but you wouldn’t enjoy that nearly as much as you enjoy the way I fucked you last night.”

“Stop,” Bill whispers, turning his face away as his cheeks burn. 

“But it’s true, isn’t it? You’ve never enjoyed something so much in your life. You loved being fucked raw and hard, filled with my cum-”

“I mean it -  _ stop! _ ” Bill shouts, shoving up from the headboard to glare into Holden’s glowing eyes. “Jesus Christ, what is this meant to do? Parade every single humiliating moment of my life - every bad choice I’ve made - in front me until I can’t take it anymore? Is that what you want? No, never mind - I already know it’s what you want. To break me down into nothing so I’m easier for you to conquer. Because I’m just a challenge to you - a fucking notch on your bedframe.”

Holden leans back in Bill’s lap, his face going slack with disappointment. 

“Get the fuck off me,” Bill mutters, shoving Holden in the chest to dismount him from his lap. 

He’s surprised when Holden’s usually stalwart frame doesn’t resist, but sinks to the sheets beside him on his backside. Sitting forward, Bill rubs his eyes to quell the faint sting. He swallows back the knot of emotion rising in his chest. 

Wendy’s voice keeps ringing in his head:  _ you’re not obligated to be who you were yesterday.  _ Yesterday, he was a self-ascribed, heterosexual man - well, maybe that’s too confident, and he considered himself a bisexual man who prefers women. The details of that lie get rockier and rockier the longer he lets it go on, the more male experiences he racks up. He’s just too stubborn to let Holden be the needle in that particular haystack that topples the entire structure. 

After a long moment of silence, Holden says, quietly, “It was more than that. I wouldn’t have left you with your memory of that night or come back today if it wasn’t.”

Bill shakes his head, exhaling a thready sigh. 

“Please, believe me.” Holden whispers, resting a soft hand on Bill’s heaving ribs and moving it slowly up his chest. “I saw you that first night you arrived here, looking so lost and alone. I could tell that you hadn’t been touched in any meaningful way in some time, that your body was so hollow and empty that it ached - that your vitality was draining out of you and dying away while you still pretended to be strong. I knew you wouldn’t let me in easily, that I had to make you open up.”

Bill clenches his jaw as Holden leans close again, caressing his cheek. A warm breath gusts against his jawline, and then his bruised throat as the grasp gently guides his chin up. A whimper knots in his throat when Holden kisses his neck, the tender spots where he’d clung so hard and pinned Bill down. 

“I wanted to touch you …” Holden continues, pressing kisses across the ridge of Bill’s clavicle, and he can almost feel that old break and scar bursting with new sensation. “Make you live a little again - not just the way you do in those cheap hotel rooms with boys you pay to have sex with - but really live.”

Bill doesn’t want to think about cheap hotel rooms. He doesn’t want to move or complain or argue anymore with Holden’s mouth kissing it’s way gently down his shuddering chest, licking softly at his nipple which is still tender from last night’s biting. 

A groan registers in his throat at the dull ache that springs up in Holden’s wake, but he’s already sinking back against the sheets and stretching his arms over his head. 

“Yes, that’s good.” Holden whispers, running his hands down Bill’s ribs and belly, priming the skin for the cascade of kisses that keep working downward. “So good. Just relax, let me take care of you …”

His voice is an intoxicating hypnosis that works its way into Bill’s brain as if he’s become nothing more than a soft, pliant sponge. Need sprouts in a hot burst low in his belly, the first pulse of hot, aching arousal that he’d endured for hours the night before. He wants to beg Holden not to make him wait like he had the first time, but his mouth is useless to do anything other than moan as Holden makes his way down between his hips. 

Peeling the sheets back, Holden finds Bill’s cock twitching with the first repressed shudders of desire. He makes a little sound of delight in the back of his throat when he lays eyes on it. 

“Oh, Bill, I’ve hardly touched you.”

Bill folds an arm over his mouth to stifle a groan. His body is betraying him again, validating every searing intuition Holden has relayed, but he can’t make it stop. The arousal swells in him like the tide, coming to sweep his feet out from under him. 

Holden moves deftly between his thighs, and guides him into position on his back again with his knees raised to his chest. He imparts warm, attentive kisses down Bill’s thighs and ass cheeks, creeping closer and closer to the quivering core of him until his hot breath is gusting against Bill’s still tender hole. 

“Wait-” Bill chokes out, casting a harried glance downward. 

“What?” Holden asks, his head lifting and unnerving red eyes peering up at Bill attentively.

“Isn’t this going to hurt after …?” Bill asks, nervously. 

“I told you it wouldn’t.”

“But, I-”

“Please, Bill. I promise that I won’t hurt you, that it will feel good.”

Bill huffs a sigh, and lets his head fall back against the pillows. His body aches, conflicted bruises warring against the swollen pulse of arousal. He can feel the thump of it through his whole body, but most especially at his groin where his hole quivers and longs for more of the same penetration and pleasure he’d received the previous night. He can’t deny how much he wants it even as the fear of pain lingers. 

Holden breathes softly against him, curating shivers up Bill’s spine that has him arching and swallowing back moans before the wet, velvet stroke of his tongue arrives. Much to his surprise and delight, it doesn’t hurt at all - in fact, the copious glaze of saliva on Holden’s tongue lathers over him like a salve, soothing the faint burn and leaving him with the remaining pulsations and shudders of arousal. The contact is superficial and fleeting, barely enough friction to satisfy the hungry need opening up in the pit of Bill’s stomach, but just enough to have him hanging on the verge and longing for more. 

“Oh, fuck …” Bill moans, hoarsely. 

Holden hums a pleased noise, and presses closer. He wraps one hand around Bill’s thigh, and slips the other set of deft fingers up his ribs to pluck gently at Bill’s nipple. His tongue swirls in dizzying, hypnotic circles that work over the puckered, stiff rim until it begins to soften to this slow massage. 

“Holden … Jesus-” Bill whispers, his spine arching with a shudder at the flick of Holden’s tongue against his opening. 

He digs his fingers into the sheets to ground himself even while Holden’s mouth threatens to detach him completely from reality. He tries opening his eyes and looking at his surroundings, but nothing about the rented hotel room makes him want to remain in Belfast or the state of mind he had arrived here in. Instead, he shutters his eyelids again, and stretches his feet over the taut musculature beneath Holden’s creamy shoulders so that he can cross his ankles behind Holden’s curly nape and draw his head closer. 

Grunting a sound of satisfaction, Holden buries his face into the cleft and sucks down on the limp pucker of Bill’s hole. 

“Oh God!” Bill shouts, his hand flying down into Holden’s hair. He arches up against the intense pressure of Holden’s lips sucking down on him, drawing the last of the resisting tension from his body. “Holden … Holden …”

Moaning Holden’s name only seems to encourage the acceleration of this fervid pleasuring. He sucks off of Bill’s tender flesh, and presses his tongue to the hole. Bill feels it wriggle inside, pushing back against the initial clench of muscle to find him limp and eager inside. 

“Yes, yes …” Bill groans, spine arching with thrills of pleasure while he pushes Holden’s head down into the bobbing pace faster, deeper. 

Holden acquiesces until Bill is panting and desperate, thrusting into his face and clinging to the brink of pleasure. Just as Bill feels himself tipping toward the edge, his cock twitching and dripping against his belly, Holden slips out of his grip. 

Rocking back on his heels, Holden gazes down at him with a smirk set on his wet, puffy lips. His eyes are glowing that burning scarlet color that threatens to set Bill aflame. 

“What …?” Bill mumbles, delirious. “Fuck, Holden, why are you stopping? Don’t stop-”

Holden turns him over onto his stomach, and guides his legs open. When he bends to press a kiss to the crest of Bill’s backside, Bill arches up to meet the presence of his wet, warm mouth. 

“Oh, please …” Bill groans, casting a feverish glance over his shoulder to see Holden hovering over him, planting kisses up the shivering curve of his spine. “I’m so close …”

Holden hums a pleased, yet thoughtful sound when he reaches Bill’s nape. “I think I want to see you on your knees again.”

Bill groans, softly. His groin clenches with arousal and humiliation, a combination that’s beginning to act like a trigger to his buried desires. Holden grasps him by the hips to help pull him up onto his knees while Bill’s trembling limbs struggle to comply. When he gets his legs under himself, he swings a desperate gaze over his shoulder at Holden. 

“There …” He whispers, shifting anxiously and arching his back. “Is this what you want?”

“Yes.” Holden murmurs, smiling gently yet devilishly as he traces the swell of Bill’s ass cheek with his fingertips. 

“What else do you want?” 

“You’re asking?” Holden’s eyebrow rises. His nails scrape softly up the back of Bill’s thigh, across bruises that he can hardly feel anymore.

“Yes, please. Just tell me what you want.” Bill groans, pressing his face into the sheets again, “I’ll do it. Just please …  _ please  _ don’t stop-”

Holden’s mouth is against him again in scarce seconds, moving swiftly, deftly, inserting his tongue deep into the recesses of Bill’s quaking body, deeper than Bill had thought physically possible. Here, his thoughts lose any kind of logical trajectory or focus; he’s fragmented and flailing, clinging to the next moment of pleasure and arousal as each one arrives, moaning open-mouthed and desperate into the pillow, and rocking back against Holden’s sweet, maddening tongue - knowing all the while that he’s been reduced down to his darkest wants and desires again, made a cock-hungry whore for them, for Holden, but not caring one bit so long as he reaches the climax that’s surging towards its pinnacle within him. 

And Holden, choosing to be a magnanimous, merciful entity this night, never once strays from the persistent and divine ministrations. 

Bill feels it cresting with him, clamping down in his groin with breath-taking force. He realizes he’s starting to cum without a single touch laid on his aching cock, and he almost can’t believe it’s about to happen until the first wet spurt jets from him and spatters his belly and thighs. 

“Oh, oh fuck- I’m coming. I’m-” Bill stammers, alarmed. 

Holden’s mouth slides slickly from him, but Bill doesn’t have more than a second to complain at the sudden loss of contact. One warm, stiff finger delves into the languishing clutches of his hole to locate the most tender cluster of nerve-endings locked away beneath his engorged prostate. With the slightest, circular stroke, Bill feels the climax accelerate from a pleasant, mounting tingle to a shocking tsunami slamming into his belly. 

He can’t breathe as Holden’s touch triggers violent spasms and enrapturing tingles from his core to his fingers and toes. He curls forward, gasping and trembling, his body and mind departing into another dimension of bliss for what feels like a small lifetime. 

As the first half of the orgasm peaks and begins to slip down the other side, Bill reaches wanly for his gushing cock, eager to extend this exquisite pleasure as long as he can, but Holden slaps his hand away. 

“No, don’t.” Holden whispers, his voice raspy with exhilaration. “I want to see it drain out of you. Slowly, drop by drop.”

He withdraws his finger from Bill’s hole, and clutches his hips to pull him back into an arched position that exposes his cock twitching and dripping between his thighs. 

Bill bites into the pillow to silence his groans as his belly flips and shivers at the low note of fascination in Holden’s voice. His groin quivers and clenches, contractions of orgasm lingering and fading gradually, wringing themselves from within in their own time. Meanwhile, his expiring cock dribbles long strings of cum that stretch from the head until they break free and drizzle down his thighs and into the bedsheets. 

He stays in place even as the orgasm cools in his veins, waiting for Holden to give him his next instruction. It feels like an age until Holden nudges his hip. 

“Roll back over.”

Bill sinks down from his cramping legs and onto the sheets with a sigh of relief. Laying back against the pillow, he hesitantly meets Holden’s red eyes. Darkness has fallen over Belfast since he first woke in the bed, and he could have well been lying in bed with the Devil. He wonders what Holden sees with his apparent night vision. Everything in full color? Even the blush of shame on his cheeks?

“What’s wrong?” Holden asks. 

“Nothing.” The lie is automatic even though he knows Holden won’t accept that answer. 

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes. What could be wrong? I’ve never cum without … without you know-”

“Without being touched?” Holden murmurs, prowling to the sheets at Bill’s side, and arranging himself closely with his chin propped on his knuckles.

He sweeps his fingers down Bill’s shuddering chest, leaving goosebumps in his wake. Bill bites his lower lip against a whimper, and nods his head. 

“You’ve never let anyone touch you like this.” 

“No.” Bill whispers, trying to look away as Holden’s fingers reach the slick mess of cum on his belly and swirl deliberately through it. Somehow, he can’t force his eyes from Holden’s, as if his gaze is drawn magnetically to their red burn. 

Holden gathers cum on two fingers, and pops them in his mouth. He sucks the taste down with a throaty groan that ends with a happy sigh when the fingers slide wetly from the suction of his lips. 

“You taste like desperation.” He murmurs, extending his fingers toward Bill’s spent cock again, “Like you’ve been holding it in forever.”

Bill sucks in a shuddering breath as Holden’s fingertips graze his highly sensitized cock, tracing its limp shape until it rouses with an aching twitch. 

“Tell me,” Holden continues, leaning closer as his touch wanders over Bill’s testicles, underneath to where he’s damp, tender, puckered. “Tell me why.”

“B-because …” Bill chokes out, his knees falling open wider, eager for more, “You were right-”

“Right?”

“I-I … hate myself.” Bill breathes out, his eyes falling mercifully shut when Holden’s hypnotic stare moves down to where he’s fondling Bill’s genitals. “Jesus Christ … I do- I woke up this morning so … so humiliated-”

“Because you enjoyed it?”

“Yes.”

“Because you want it again?” 

Bill’s back arches, and he nearly cries as Holden rubs his palm up the pulsing shaft of his cock, fostering fresh arousal. 

“ _ Yes _ !” He groans past clenched teeth. 

“Because you want me to fuck you again and again?”

Bill nods, desperately. Even as he admits it, the ugly disgust that burned in his stomach for most of the day fades away, down into the abysmal darkness with every other tragedy that has dogged his life. It doesn’t have a place here in this little cocoon of fantasy that Holden sews around them. It doesn’t have a place beside the pleasure that Holden - perhaps by some magic spell - has planted in his body once again. 

“Good.” Holden says, nuzzling a kiss to his cheek, and smearing his sweet saliva across Bill’s trembling lower lip, “I’m going to make you cum, Bill, as many times as it takes for you to forget what that hatred feels like.” 

Bill’s face goes hot again, hotter than before because this time it’s paired with unbearable exhilaration. He tries to respond to that promise, but the effort is already wasted as Holden kisses him deliberately on the mouth. This time, he opens his lips eagerly, and lets that intoxicating taste invade his senses, drug him, pull him under. Then, the room around him sharpens, and he can feel everything - every tiny brush of Holden’s skin, the faint prick of his fanged teeth, the heated gust of his breath on Bill’s cheeks, and the tickle of his fingertips leading Bill’s spent cock upright against his belly again, and encouraging it to twitch harder and harder. 

“Oh my God …” Bill whispers, breathlessly. 

Holden’s deft fingers circle around the root, and drag upward in one long, heavenly stroke. It’s all at once too much and not enough, the same kind of delicious torture Bill had been forced to endure for hours at a time yesterday. Even so, he’s learned nothing, and he can’t make himself lie still and take it; he squirms helplessly, knees rising and pressing shut on Holden’s arm.

“Stop that,” Holden admonishes, softly. 

“Fuck, sorry.” Bill groans, easing his knees open again. “It’s just so much …”

“You’re still trying to control how much you let yourself feel this - enjoy it. I want you to try to relax. I’m not expecting a certain performance. I just want you to be as satisfied as possible. If that’s two orgasms or six, I don’t care.”

“What about you?” Bill asks. 

Holden crawls between his limp thighs, and bends to breathe hotly across his cock - and the question gets lost in the ether with everything else. 

“Oh, Jesus!” Bill cries, his spine arching taut against the exploding ripple of tingles down his body at the wet heat of Holden’s mouth taking him in. 

Holden hums on a mouthful of cock, adding throaty vibrations to the rising hum of arousal. Bracing his fist around the root, he shifts into a steady rhythm sucking down on Bill’s cock that’s both reserved and unrelenting. His mouth is so hot and wet while it skillfully pleasures him that the sensation is just as good as, if not better than, any sex he’s had with another body, male or female. 

He’s had his share of blowjobs, but this moment redefines his opinions and preferences. No one has ever sucked his cock like this before; it feels like his insides are slowly being drawn from within, his resistance and control compressed and destroyed. He can’t think, much less draw in a proper breath; and so he spends the next few moments cursing softly and choking on air, thinking he’s slowly dying - but dying in the best way possible, dying and drifting off into eternity where it’s warm and light, where he can’t even consider despising himself for enjoying these ministrations. 

Abruptly, Holden leans back, and lets Bill’s cock pop free of his lips. 

He doesn’t sound out of breath or taxed as he asks, curiously, “How’s that?”

“Good. Really good.” Bill groans, reaching for Holden’s head to shove it back down, “Keep going, please …”

Holden chuckles softly, and bends to lick Bill’s cock as if it’s a lollipop. His hand pumps firmly at the base, trapping desperate pulsations and milking him of dribbling precum that’s quickly lapped away. 

“Mmm, you taste so good,” Holden croons. 

He follows the remark with a dizzying swirl of his tongue and the return of his lips suctioning around the tip; and Bill nearly cums right there, his whole body seizing up against the wet pressure. But Holden is conservative, moving his mouth slowly down the shaft, fitting the entire thing down his throat. He doesn’t even gag. 

Bill’s eyes spring open, and dart down to watch the length of his cock disappearing past Holden’s stretched lips. 

“Oh fuck, oh fuck …” He hears himself whispering the curse, chanting it repeatedly as if it could keep him tied to reality; but his mind is already gone with pleasure, the insides of his brains soft and hazy with gradually emerging climax. 

He pets Holden’s curls with trembling fingers, not wanting to grab on too hard and disrupt the breath-taking pleasure of Holden’s throat flexing around his cock. He blinks, biting back a groan that’s quick to rip past his clenched teeth as Holden’s lips reach the base of his cock, and he sinks closer, burying his nose into Bill’s pubic hair with a pleased groan. 

“Oh my God …” Bill chokes out, his whole body stiffening with tingling ripples of pleasure. “Holden … Holden, that’s- … I’m-”

Holden shifts back into motion, a rhythm that’s grinding and firm, yet just persistent enough to tip Bill over the edge. One hand braces around Bill’s hip while the other rests over Bill’s pounding heart, undoubtedly feeling the exact moment when it explodes into an adrenaline and pleasure-laced beat. 

“Holden, I’m coming-” Bill groans out, still feeling obligated to warn him despite Holden’s apparent hunger for his release. 

And Holden doesn’t pull back or use his hand to finish the orgasm. His mouth stays latched to Bill’s cock while this second round of spasms rip through him, making his body tremble and lurch to the touch like a marionette to its master’s strings. 

The orgasm is less violent and protracted this time, but the pleasure washes through him in warm, encompassing waves that leave him feeling fuzzy and melted, the rough borders of his body undefined and softening into a mass of lazy, pleasured flesh. As the orgasm declines into the tingling aftermath, he can’t do so much as lift a finger aside from opening his eyelids halfway and looking down at Holden’s head rising from between his thighs. 

Holden straightens, and curls his wicked, pink tongue over his lips. His mouth squirms against a smile, and a chuckle emerges from his throat. 

“What?” Bill asks, his voice no more than a raspy whisper. 

“You have that look.” Holden says, crawling forward to lay himself over Bill’s chest. He rests like a feather, more of a comforting blanket rather than a suffocating weight. 

“Look?” Bill echoes. 

“Blissed-out.” 

“Sounds about right.” 

Holden strokes Bill’s cheek, affectionately. “Good. It’s the best feeling when a human accepts and enjoys what I’m offering.”

“How could they not?”

“Because, they’re always afraid of me first.”

Bill’s tired eyes open wider. He remembers how Holden had appeared on his windowsill last night. His first question. Are you afraid? He’d sounded devilishly pleased by the prospect, but now he only sounds disappointed. 

“No offense, but it’s a little disconcerting for a human to see a creature with red eyes following them around.” Bill points out. 

Holden mumbles a sigh, and glances away, as if he’s suddenly self-conscious of the scarlet irises. 

“You’ve got all your magic tricks. Why can’t you change that?” Bill asks. 

Holden sighs, and glances back down at him with a frown. “That’s just how it is. My people, the _púca_ , they usually have the most beautiful, golden eyes.”

“Why not you?” 

Holden bites his lower lip. “Promise you won’t try to run away from me again.”

“Do I look like I’m going anywhere?” Bill asks, ruefully, glancing at his limbs sprawled in a satisfied array beneath Holden’s body. 

“Last night, you asked me what kind of demon I was …”

“Yeah, because demons torture people - and that’s what you were doing to me.”

Holden purses his lips against a smile that’s quick to fade. He clears his throat. “You weren’t completely off from the truth.”

“I wasn’t?”

“The two creatures who bore me … my mother and father, if you will - they weren’t purely _púca_. One of them was. The other was a half-breed from a race of demons who had been all but hunted to extinction because everyone else believed them to be violent and untamable, a scourge on the Underworld.” 

“Hence the red eyes?”

“Hence.” Holden mutters, “The _púca_ took me in, but my own people don’t trust me. That’s why I was so quick to return to the gate last night. If I don’t keep to their strict rules, I could be exiled or worse.”

“Worse?”

“Imprisoned.”

“Jesus.” Bill mutters, reaching up to stroke Holden’s bare shoulder. He feels goosebumps under his fingers and wonders if it’s a true, biological response or if it’s been magically conjured for his benefit. 

“When you asked me to stay last night …” Holden whispers, a smile touching his mouth, “Well, no one has ever asked me to stay. I decided to leave you with your memory of our encounter with the hopes that you would seek me out again, if not tonight then perhaps next year … or some other year in the future …”

“I was going to try to cleanse you from my system.” Bill says, giving a mirthless chuckle. 

“I understand why it felt like a violent, spiritual encounter. It’s in my nature. I can’t change it.” 

Bill moves his hand from Holden’s shoulder to his cheek. His skin is so warm that it’s nearly feverish. In a human, it would be concerning and uncomfortable, but Holden’s weight on top of him is acting more like a little space heater making him sleepy and content. 

“This is in your nature, too.” Bill whispers, bewildered by the realization even as it passes his lips. 

Holden’s response gets lost in a slow, aching kiss, their mouths drifting open and coming together, tongues joining and melting together in a gradual dance behind both their teeth. Holden’s saliva tastes sweeter than ever, a kind of wine that goes instantly to Bill’s bloodstream and brain. He sinks under, willingly. 

  
  


Bill crawls into awareness some time later, but he can’t be sure how long he’s been asleep. The room is dark, barely pierced by starlight. Underneath the sheets, he and Holden’s bodies are pressed close together, and he can feel that strange, wet heat seeping from within him as it had on their first night together. 

Holden rocks against him, cock hard at his tailbone, shaft sliding between Bill’s asscheeks to find him slowly growing wetter and wetter with magically curated need. Chest pressed to Bill’s back, he clings like a vine, a small yet powerful thing knitting itself to Bill’s flesh. His arm is wrapped around Bill’s chest, holding him close, and his breath surges in blistering gusts against Bill’s nape. 

Tingles swarm in Bill’s belly, and a groan climbs up his throat. He shoves the sheets from his chest as heat explodes through his body, a fiery path of need burgeoning from his belly and spreading outward like a rampant wildfire. 

Holden’s palm stretches down his heaving chest to find his belly quivering. Slowly, it finds it cock, teases it with the graze of his fingertips. 

“Oh, fuck …” Bill curses, hips leaping against the sudden stimulation. 

“You want it again?” Holden whispers, roughly against his ear. 

“Yes …”

“You want me to fuck you?”

“God, yes-”

“Say it. Beg me for it.”

“Please,” Bill whimpers without further encouragement, “Fuck, please, I want you to fuck me. I want you inside me … Want your cock, want you to fuck me until I cum … please-”

Holden guides his cock up against Bill’s hole, and thrusts into him. It slides easily on the excess of lubricant drizzling out of him, and their bodies meet so quickly that the vacancy disappears from his body with a wet squelch. 

“Ohhh!” Bill cries out, his back arching as Holden’s cock strikes him deep, every sequestered nerve-ending built for pleasure at once. 

Holden sighs in satisfaction against his ear, and clutches Bill’s hip to draw him back into an abruptly driven rhythm. 

He can’t think anymore about tonight or the night before. He can’t parse reality from the truth, or even remember if their conversation before he’d fallen asleep was a figment of his imagination meant to humanize this creature fucking him or if Holden really had bared his heart and soul. He can only breathe and moan, and let his body be guided back and impaled on Holden’s divine, hard cock. That ingrained instinct to fight how good it feels withers the moment it begins, and he’s enthusiastically thrusting into the deep penetration without any sense of this moment’s ending or beginning. He knows he’ll get to the pleasure eventually, but right now, the friction and harmony of their bodies is just enough, too much, so good. 

At the end of it, Holden pumps the orgasm from Bill’s body with his persistently thrusting cock and his hand wrapped around Bill’s throbbing erection. Whispered praises tickle the back of Bill’s neck, and he shudders against a wave tingles while his spend drizzles from him, cooling in Holden’s palm. 

“Do you hate it?” Holden asks. 

“No … Want more …” Bill mumbles. 

He’s rewarded for the rest of the night - in out of awareness, out of dreams. Fantasy, reality, and dreams blend into a mass of white heat and warmth, of aching need and spasming pleasure. Not much more is spoken aside from Holden’s enduring desire to hear Bill say how good it feels, and to beg for his cock again. He cums again and again, and he doesn’t know how. It must be some spell, or the curse of a half-breed demon. The grounds of Holden’s “good behavior” on this first day of November are questionable at best, satisfying at most. 

On the last orgasm, Holden kisses him fervently. Bill is hardly awake, all soft and melted and drowned in sensation and release. 

“Don’t forget me,” Holden whispers, stroking Bill’s cheek, “When you leave this place, don’t forget how I made you feel …”

Delirious, Bill mumbles something that must be akin to, “how could I?” But he’s not even sure that memory is real. He’s asleep again before Holden responds. 

When he wakes the next morning to sunlight dappling the bedspread and the clock reading eleven-thirty, his body doesn’t hurt anymore. Holden had left him with a satisfied warmth, more of a helpless, boneless hum rather than the sore ache from last night.

But he’s completely alone. Holden hadn’t said goodbye. 

  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

The Linen Hall Library on Donegall Square is a fifteen minute walk from the hotel. After a long, hot shower and another round with the douche, Bill dresses casually in a knit sweater and maroon blazer to ward off the chill that’s fallen over Belfast in the course of just two days. Despite the breeze coming in from the Lagan River, he eschews a taxi ride to cross the brief distance to the library in favor of letting the smell of the river and the city aerate the smoky scent of incense that seems to cling to the insides of his nostrils. 

When he woke this morning, he’d tentatively pushed away the sheets to survey the damage of two consecutive nights with Holden, but he’d been shocked to realize that through some spell, his body had been nocturnally healed of the bruising and scratches. Crawling hesitantly from the bed, he could feel only the faint ache within him, down into the deepest core of him reserved for Holden’s singular, extensive touch. It’s all he’s left with aside from his memories - the realization that he’s been invaded and touched in a way that no one else will ever be able to match. 

Bill shakes the thought from his mind as he reaches the library with it’s impressive, white stone entryway. Beyond the front door, the library is mostly deserted. He ignores the matronly librarian behind the front desk who offers him a smile. Normally, he wouldn’t mind asking for help when conducting research, but this particular subject is a puzzle he’d rather keep to himself. 

As such, he wanders the vast shelves and endless rows of books for fifteen minutes before narrowing in on the section that he’s looking for. He spends another half an hour in the dedicated  _ Irish Mythology  _ branch combing through the volumes’ tables of contents to see if they include what he’s researching. Eventually, he carries a stack of six different books to a sequestered sofa beneath the massive, winding staircase that bisects the center of the library. 

Opening the first book, he flips to the chapter on the  _ púca _ with tremulous fingers, but his hopes of unearthing new information quickly sink. Most of the text is no more than a detailed explanation of the creature that Anita had already given him at the pub, immature and fairytale lingo that mimic campfire stories. After reading for less than ten minutes, he tosses the book aside with a frustrated sigh. 

Rubbing his fingertips over his forehead, he presses his eyes shut against the memory of Holden’s voice telling him things about himself he’s always known but never wanted to believe. In his work, he’s used to identifying a subject, researching their history and crimes, and meeting them in a controlled environment to interview them on their personal opinions and feelings about what they’ve done. Last night, those roles were reversed. Holden had profiled him more closely and accurately than Bill has ever managed to do with a serial killer. 

_ What the hell am I even looking for?  _ He wonders, glancing over the books stacked on the table beside him.

But he already knows. His sense of control. His sense of self. His identity before Belfast, before the last two days, before Holden. He’s never going to find it in twenty hours of research into the mysterious  _ púca,  _ but God knows he must try. He’s too stubborn not to. 

Bill selects a different volume that focuses more on the dark, monstrous forces at work in Irish mythology. He leafs through each chapter, wondering if he can identify the race of hunted, violent demons Holden mentioned, or if the human world has no real understanding of what goes on in the Underworld. Maybe these books are all just conjecture, a mix of experience and hearsay, myths and fables; and Holden is something he’ll never be able to identify or understand - that thought, more than anything, terrifies him. 

Despite his skepticism, Bill spends three hours in the library, lost in the pages of the volumes and the mythological stories of ancient beasts. A few days ago, he would have written off every single book as bullshit, but he reads each entry with carefully weighed intrigue and suspicion. 

Most of the accounts cast the demons as gargantuan, malicious beings intent on bringing harm and destruction to the human race. It would be easy for him to take Holden’s marginal, demonic heritage, and cast himself as a victim - to explain away his own impulses with magic and spells. He could go back to Virginia, and convince himself that he’d been forced into wanting what Holden intended to do to him. Recalling all the bruises and aches he’d woken with yesterday morning, it wouldn’t be difficult. 

Bill pauses from his reading to look out the window at Belfast and all of the pedestrians scurrying about their mundane little lives, unaware of the supernatural forces at work around them, and wishes he could be just like them once more. Assured of his beliefs, of the way the world works, his place in it. 

_ That’s never gonna fucking happen.  _ He thinks, ruefully, snapping the book shut. 

He gathers up the volumes, and returns them to their places on the shelves. Leaving the library, he walks back in the direction of the hotel, but doesn’t turn down the road towards his lodgings. He keeps going down to the waterfront where the Lagan River surges gray and salty past the city. 

Bracing his elbows against the railing, Bill lights the cigarette, and watches the tide. It takes him the entirety of the cigarette to wrestle the mounting realization down to the pit of his stomach where resignation burns:  _ He’s never going to be able to get Holden out of his mind.  _

  
  
  


Bill spends his last three days in Belfast attempting to keep himself occupied with sight-seeing and tours around the city, and evenings spent in the pubs drinking beers by himself at the bar. He keeps expecting Holden to materialize from the crowd, or to glimpse a pair of red eyes watching him from across the city intersections; but he can almost sense that the magic has well and truly departed from the city with the death of autumn. These streets are just concrete pathways tread by a hundred human feet before him, both cold and brutal, a stunning reminder that he’d come here looking for nothing and no one and walked away with more than he can digest or accept.

After he packs his bags on the morning of his departure, he scans the hotel room with it’s gaudy wallpaper, creamy sheets, and the lamp slightly crooked from Holden tossing it across the room, and imagines once more that it had all been a dream. At any moment, he’s going to wake up in his apartment back in Virginia.

As he rides in the taxi to the airport and shuffles through the boarding line, it never happens. He’s still wide awake and grounded in reality when the plane descends into Dulles, and he exits to see Wendy waiting for him at the arrival gate. 

“Welcome back,” She says.

“Thanks for being my ride.” 

“No problem. What else do I have to do on a Saturday morning?” She asks, casting him a coy smile as they fall into step toward baggage claim. 

“I don’t know. A beautiful woman like you, out on the town …”

The fledgling attempt at humor falls flat. They quietly step onto the escalator rolling endlessly toward ground level, and she turns to pin him with a curious stare. Even though she’s on the step below him, he doesn’t feel like he has the upper hand in this standoff. 

“So … how was it?” She asks after he spends most of the ride down the escalator avoiding her stare and biting his lower lip. 

“Good.” 

Her eyes narrow. 

“Can we not talk about it? I had a little too much to drink the night before I called you, and I was throwing myself a pretty spectacular pity party. I’m fine now.”

“You had me worried.”

“Yeah, me too. But you told me to go figure my shit out, and that’s what I did. I’m fine.” 

She concedes with a dip of her head, but he doesn’t expect the conversation to be final. She knows when to push and when to give him space. After giving him sufficient time to prove that he really is fine and he fails to do so, she’ll be back on him like a dog with a bone. 

Despite the tumult of the past few days, Bill suddenly feels incredibly lucky to have a friend like Wendy. 

On the drive back to his apartment, he tells her about Jim and Anita’s unique Halloween party and the tours he took around the city. She catches him up on things around the office during his absence. He’d missed one interview, nothing too special according to her. He can hear the transcript on Monday. 

“So, you see that the department didn’t grind to halt just because you gave yourself some time off.” She says as she parks at the curb of his apartment building. 

“Thanks to you.” 

“You’re welcome.”

“Well, thanks again for the ride.” Bill says, reaching over to unlatch the door. 

Her hand on his arm stops him. Their gazes meet, this time soberly. 

“Bill,” Wendy says, “I expect to see you back on Monday morning. Not just you, but my friend who I began this project with.”

Bill swallows hard, and tries to offer a reassuring nod. 

She lets him go with a faint smile. 

As he drags his bags to the door of his apartment and watches Wendy’s car pull away from the curb, his stomach clenches. He remembers the man who walked into the first interview with a serial killer, and believed the world to be black and white with shades of gray in between; but Wendy’s friend who went to her for help getting their unit off the ground didn’t have a clue about the hues of red that stain the inscrutable backdrop of an otherworldly dimension. Neither of them are ever going to get that person back. 

  
  
  


For most of the first few weeks after his return from Belfast, Bill buries his head in work, and tries not to think about Holden. It’s a difficult task considering that the images of his red eyes or his lithe, pale body positioned between Bill’s legs are quick to pop up in the back of his mind at the most inopportune moments, such as in the middle of listening to a interview tape, or when he’s pouring over police reports and crime scene photos from a consult request, or as he’s walking into a correctional facility to face the next sexual sadist. It’s even more difficult to resist his thoughts turning down that dark, erotic path when he’s alone, hidden away in the four walls of his little bedroom, listening to the wail of a siren cut through downtown Fredericksburg until it drowns away beneath the memorized rasp of Holden’s breath in his ear. 

At first, he tries not to acknowledge his own desires, but it’s as if Holden awakened a dormant volcano. A month after Belfast, Bill wakes on Saturday morning from an especially visceral dream to find himself hard and aching. Rolling over in bed, he buries his face into the pillow, and rocks his hips into the mattress until the dull pulse of his erection begins to hurt. It doesn’t feel good, and that’s what he wants. 

He spends a good ten minutes trying to smother the desires, but they are already alive and burning through his veins. He presses his index finger into his mouth, wetting it just enough before he slips his hand under his boxers to locate his hole. He sticks his finger roughly inside, hissing and cursing at the burn of inadequate lubrication. 

It doesn’t feel anything like when Holden touched him. 

_ Good.  _ He thinks, pumping his hand harder.  _ Is this what you really want? Is this what you want to feel?  _

Stubbornly, he refuses to be gentler with his aching body, and eventually tires of the painful burn. He crawls out of bed, and takes a cold shower to freeze the lingering desire in his veins. When he steps out of the shower, shivering and chilled, he glares down his reflection in the mirror, and hopes to God it’s a lesson that sticks. 

The result is more of a tug-of-war than the resounding victory he’d hoped for. 

As the weeks since Belfast stretch on, the immediacy of his memory fades, but the genesis of his desire sharpens like a whetted blade. The small, troublesome thing in the back of his mind that he’s been silencing for years finally has a voice and vindication. It reminds him daily that his marriage to Nancy is over, and then it reminds him of exactly why he’d failed whenever he notices a handsome young man on the street or accidentally brushes up against the intern by the fax machine. 

The intern looks a little too much like Holden for his liking, and Bill wonders just exactly what sources the faery-demon had drawn upon to create the form it presented to him. Holden said that he knew what Bill wanted before he realized it. If that’s true, then his desires still have one foot in reality. 

It’s the only reassurance Bill can count on right now. If he can find some way to disconnect these feelings from Holden, he might have a fighting chance of ousting the creature once and for all from his mind. Success in that arena is all he can hope for at this point; convincing himself that he doesn’t like men - or that his attraction to men isn’t at least as strong as it is towards women, perhaps stronger - isn’t a feasible goal. 

That’s what he tells himself when he puts on a hat and sunglasses to furtively slip into the adult store a good half an hour from both Fredericksburg and Quantico. The bundle of nerves churning in his belly edges him towards vomiting or perhaps fleeing the shop when he carries his purchases to the counter. The young man manning the cashier’s desk appears nonplussed by the raunchy items, and Bill is relieved that they don’t exchange any words beyond his total and his payment in cash. 

When he retreats back to his car, clutching the paper sack in his lap, he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the rearview mirror. He looks like a high schooler caught masturbating behind the bleachers to a Polaroid of the cheerleader’s breasts. If Holden was here right this second, he would be doubled over in laughter. 

Frustrated, Bill shoves the thought of Holden from his mind, and drives back to Fredericksburg with a strange anticipation curling in his gut. When he gets home, he pulls the items from the sack, and stares at them laid out on his bedspread with shame flushing his cheeks. 

He rubs both hands over his face, and mutters into the silence, “Fuck me.”

Still, he can’t ignore the fact that he hasn’t had a proper orgasm in over two months, and the niggling urge down in his belly is all but clawing itself free. 

Stripping out of his clothes, he lays a towel down on the bed, and crawls to the middle on his hands and knees. His fingers are trembling as he flips the magazine open. The naked young man splayed over the glossy pages looks nothing like Holden.

Bill stares at the photograph, memorizing the stranger’s face until he can faintly conjure it in his mind, until it manages to overwrite Holden’s red eyes and fanged teeth glistening behind his plump lips. He imagines hands touching him, mouth hot against his neck, fingers probing into him, an entirely human man taking over his body. 

He’s hard in a matter of seconds. Grabbing the bottle of lubricant, he pours some out onto his fingers, and presses them behind him. He’s tight and resistant, his body unaccustomed to this kind of invasion and devoid of a magical spell to make it swift and easy. 

Ignoring the initial clench and burn, he exhales a soothing sigh, and tries to relax against the massaging pressure of his fingers. Eventually, he slips a finger inside, and the sensation is thrilling. Curling his fist around the bedspread, he slips his eyes open to reassure the image in his mind of the model in the magazine, and begins to thrust eagerly. 

He hadn’t anticipated just how needy the repressed desires trapped inside his body were. He’d only meant to get himself relaxed and open for the dildo, but the pleasure surges hard through his core; he can’t stop himself from taking his cock in his other hand, rubbing it no more than five times before he begins to orgasm. 

His mouth stretches open in a shocked, breathless cry as the climax grips him in cascading waves of spasms and tingles. His cock spills release across the towel, coming and coming until he thinks it might never end. He clings onto the pleasure, milking it from him with a firm fist on his cock and his fingers lodged hard within him, longing to live inside the relief for as long as he can manage. 

It fades all too soon, leaving him sinking down with his forehead pressed to the scratchy fabric of the towel. His body shudders through the aftershocks. A pleasant, limp warmth settles, a sense of exhaustion after weeks of arguing with himself over the simple mechanics of desire. 

He lays facedown on the bed for what feels like an hour before the gnawing desire in his belly reawakens. This time, he doesn’t resist or negotiate with himself. 

He grabs the dildo. It's silicone flesh is all rubbery and cool but blunt and promising relief. Lathering it in lubricant, he pushes up onto his knees, and presses it slowly into his hole. He gasps and curses into the duvet as the pressure mounts, stretching him open, making him ache and clench. Once he manages to get it all the way inside, he’s dizzy and breathless with the overload of sensation and hard again, twitching with need from between his shaking thighs. 

In the midst of reckless, sexual fervor, he forgets all about the magazine spread open in front of him. As he begins to pump the toy in out of him, his memories rend open, and it’s Holden fucking him from behind, Holden grasping his hips until they bruise, Holden telling him how fucking beautiful he looks seated on his cock. Holden, Holden, Holden …

Bill thrusts a hand between his thighs, too desperate and headlong into the pleasure to back away from the unfolding fantasy. His cock aches in his palm as if he hadn’t even cum the first time, but he doesn’t have the sense to wonder just what the hell Holden has done to him. He’s already coming again, his hole clamping viciously around the invasion of the dildo and his cock jolting and gushing cum under the duress of his jerking fist. 

When the orgasm abates, he sinks down to the bed with the dildo still firmly lodged inside him. For the space of five minutes, he can’t move except for the exhilarated shudder of his breath and the flutter of his eyelashes blinking the meteor shower from behind his vision. 

_ Don’t forget me ... _ Holden’s voice whispers so clearly in his mind that Bill’s head pops up from the sheets to deliriously scan the room. He’s utterly alone save for the spell Holden must have knitted into those three damning words. It’s beginning to feel more like a curse. 

  
  
  


Over the next six months, two things happen. 

Bill and Wendy’s unit, Behavioral Science, officially publishes their manual on profiling, skyrocketing them from the basement to a third floor office suite with the rest of the respected units at Quantico. The requests from local police departments for consults multiply to a staggering degree. While they scramble to hire and train more agents, Bill’s workload doubles, and he’s called out of town almost every other week. 

On one hand, he’s grateful for the influx of new challenges and distractions to keep him busy. His dedication to work doesn’t allow him much personal time for introspection or indulging in desires, offering a grueling but welcome reprieve from those first few torturous weeks after his return from Belfast. On the other hand, he’s exhausted most of the time, and his weekends with his son, Brian, are mostly spent parked in front of the television trying not to drift off to sleep on the couch while the kid plays quietly with his Hot Wheels. 

The second major shift occurs when Nancy comes over to drop Brian off one weekend, and instead of offering the perfunctory pleasantries and arrangements for pick-up, she asks to come inside. 

“Sure,” He says, waving her into the apartment. 

She tries to be conservative about inspecting the apartment, but he can tell that she’s curious about how he’s living his life two years after their divorce. She hasn’t been inside in well over six months. He’s suddenly self-conscious of the empty beer cans and the pizza box on the coffee table leftover from Friday night.

“Well, how have you been?” He asks, clearing his throat. 

Her gaze swings from the living room to meet his query. “That’s what I wanted to talk about.”

“Okay. Do you want something to drink?”

“Water’s fine.” She says, following him into the kitchen. 

She sits down at the table, and folds her hands tightly in her lap.

He frowns as he gets her glass of water from the tap, and sits down across from her. 

“What’s going on?” 

“Well, I’ve been meaning to tell you … that I’m-” There’s a lengthy pause as she avoids his questioning gaze by looking down into her lap. She clears her throat, and draws in a deep breath. “I’m seeing someone.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah …” She says, laughing nervously and twisting her fingers through a curl at her nape. “I, um … I’ve been seeing him for a few months now, but it’s getting pretty serious.”

“I see.”

“He wants to make it official … and so do I.”

Bill nods, slowly, and repeats, “I see.”

“I just wanted to tell you because Brian is still your child, and I didn’t want to introduce him to another man without telling you first or explaining that-”

“Nance, you don’t have to explain it to me.” Bill says, averting his gaze to the window where the city skyline of Fredericksburg glistening in the morning sunshine. “We’ve been divorced for almost two years now. I’d say it’s high time for both of us to move on.”

“Oh, are you seeing someone too?” 

Bill begins to laugh, but swallows it down. “No, I uh …”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You made it sound like …”

“Well, I … I did meet someone in Belfast last year.” Bill says, shocking himself with the admittance. His pulse spikes as he turns his gaze back to her. 

She’s frowning softly. “In Belfast?”

“Yeah, but it was, you know … A one-night stand thing. Obviously.”

“Okay …”

Bill sighs, and rubs a hand over his forehead. “It was, uh … nevermind.”

“What?” She asks, leaning forward to put her hand on his arm. 

Bill looks down at her manicured nails pure white over his tanned wrist. It’s weird how comforting it is after he’d spent so much time resenting her. Maybe after two years, he’s remembering again what good friends they used to be. She’d always tried to understand him with her heart. 

“Nothing. It just made me rethink things.” 

“Like what?” 

“Myself.” Bill whispers, hesitantly meeting her gaze. 

“In a good way?” 

“I don’t know … It was a confusing time. I still think about it, but I’m not sure what it meant, you know.”

“Sometimes we just meet people at the wrong time.”

“Yeah, well, there was never going to be a right time with this … this person.”

Nancy begins to shake her head, a frown puckering her brow. 

“What?” Bill asks, sharply. 

“If I’ve learned anything these past two years, it’s that you can’t wait for the stars to align, Bill. If you want something, you have to go get it. You can’t sit back and wait for life to come to you - or for the answers to magically drop out of the sky.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Then if you still think about this lady in Belfast, maybe you should try contacting her again.”

“You don’t understand-”

“Well, maybe we’ve been separated for two years, but we were married for ten before that and I know you. You’re not a sentimental person, so if you’re still thinking about this person it must have meant something more than a fling.”

“I don’t want to think about it. It was … terrible.”

“Terrible?” She echoes, skeptically. "A one night stand in a faraway country was terrible?"

Bill cuts his gaze away from her, and clenches his jaw. He wants to tell her that it was humiliating and awful so she can validate his resistance, but he can’t explain what happened to her. He can’t even convince himself. 

“You’re not making any sense.” Nancy says, retrieving her hand from his arm. 

“Yeah, not to myself either.”

“You can talk to me, you know. We’re still friends.” She says, her voice softening. 

He meets her gaze again, and some of the tightness in his chest eases. “Yeah, I know. Thanks.”

After an uneasy moment, he asks her to tell him about the new guy she’s seeing. His name is Steve. He sells insurance, but enjoys woodworking on the side. A sensitive guy with a good sense of humor. Everything that Bill isn’t. He tells her he hopes she’s happy. 

She seems happy enough when she leaves him with a chaste kiss on the cheek and the smell of her perfume lingering in the entryway. He stands by the door for a while after she’s gone thinking about what she’d said. Go back to Belfast. Never once since last year had he actually considered it. Not until now. 

  
  
  


In August, Bill is in Miami, Florida on consult for the murders of two young socialites who had been staying in Key West on vacation. The murders were at first thought to be drug related since the girls had cocaine in their system at the time of death, but the the BSU had been called in due to the apparent sexual assault on the bodies. 

Bill can’t complain about the ocean view from his hotel room despite the unrelenting, tropical temperatures that have him sweating all day long. After a week in Miami, he’s ready to get back to balmy Virginia, but the case has made little headway aside from family interviews and the autopsy reports confirming both girls had died by strangulation. The families claim that the girls would have never done drugs, but Bill doesn’t buy it. What else do two young, rich, white girls have to do in Key West other than party and try illicit drugs? 

Frustrated with the stalling investigation, he walks down to the beach one night in his bare feet to watch the tide come in below a spectacular sunset. The sky seems to stretch on forever over the clear, placid blue of the Atlantic. He already has the smell of this place memorized along with everywhere else he’s been. 

Closing his eyes, Bill steps into the shallow, foamy waves creeping across the sand. He listens to the waves crash and the wind drift lazily against his cheeks. The water is warm against his ankles as it pushes sand between his toes and begs him to step further into the tide. He’s seriously considering stripping out of his clothes and diving in when the sound of approaching hooves against the sand and a quiet whinny jolt his eyes wide open. 

Bill’s head swivels to his right to see the black horse cantering toward him. In the dusky light, its eyes are faded red like the dying embers of a bonfire. It stops several feet away, but it’s hooves stamp at the sand and foamy water as if a mercurial energy keeps it from standing still. 

Every hair on Bill’s body stands to attention. He’s both hot and cold, stifled and hyperventilating. His feet suddenly feel as if they’re mired in quicksand rather than the gentle ocean waves. 

“Holden …” He chokes out. 

The world moves very slowly around them. The horse shifts closer, but it seems to take an eternity until it’s standing right in front of him. 

Bill hesitantly raises his hand. He isn’t entirely convinced that he’s not dreaming this encounter even if it feels as real as that first meeting in the streets of Belfast. 

“We don’t have much time.”

It’s Holden’s voice coming from within the beast, but though Bill can see it’s mouth moving, he hears it as if it’s echoing inside his own head. 

“How is this happening?” Bill whispers. 

“That doesn’t matter. You haven’t forgotten me, have you?”

Bill shakes his head. He tries reaching out to touch the horse’s regal, black nose, but it takes a step back as if physical touch could shatter this thrall. 

“You should listen to Nancy. Come back to Belfast in the autumn.”

Bill stares at the red eyes which now seem less wicked and more desperate. The hooves paw impatiently at the sand. 

“Will you? Say you will.”

Bill opens his mouth, and tries to speak. He doesn’t know why but he feels compelled to do what Holden is asking - to promise it with his heart crossed. With the words lodged in his throat, he simply nods. 

The horse whinnies softly, a placated sound. 

Bill shifts his gaze to the water for only a second. “What is it about you and the water?”

When he looks back, the horse is gone. 

After what feels like no more than five seconds of staring at the empty beach, Bill wakes up in his hotel room with the resplendent, Miami sunlight ushering warmth and awareness past the window. Disoriented, he rolls over and blinks up at the ceiling. His body is cocooned in the sheets, limbs heavy and sedate as if he’s been sleeping for days. He doesn’t remember crawling into bed. He doesn’t remember much past leaving the police station yesterday, and stopping to get a hotdog from the street vendor before making his way to the beach. 

Abruptly, Bill shoves the sheets back from his chest and sits up. He’s in his boxers - he doesn’t remember undressing either - but he doesn’t feel used or violated. Running his hands down his body in search of bruises, he finds nothing. 

It was only a dream. Or a vision. 

He’s alarmed and vexed as he realizes that the little, cramping knot in the pit of his stomach is nothing if not acute disappointment. 

  
  
  


The killer in Miami turns out to be three killers - a group of boys led by young man solidifying his identity as career criminal with other larceny and rape charges already under his twenty-three year old belt. The trio had met the two socialites in the club scene in Miami with the plan to date rape one of the girls. Once her friend figured out what was happening, she tried to stop it, and was abducted along with the original target. According to the two accomplices, the leader had convinced them that they needed to kill both girls to get away with it. A night of partying gone horribly wrong. 

Grimly, Bill isn’t shocked by the results. People of all walks of life kill one another for varying reasons. People kill for their desires. It’s some small comfort that his own wrestle in the dark has never gone so awry. 

He leaves Florida with Holden on his mind. The gripping reverie is as intense as it had been when he left Belfast nearly a year ago, as if the vision of Holden on the beach unburied the grave he’d dug for those two nights. The skeleton crawls from the concealed dirt, fully formed and alive, not quite as rotten as he’d hoped. 

When he gets back to Fredericksburg, the scent of incense haunts him. 

A week later, he offers to buy Wendy a drink if she’ll lend an ear for an hour or two. They meet at the Command Post Pub not far from Quantico where other Bureau agents and recruits crowd at the bar and booths. He doesn’t look out of place here, but he feels like an imposter as he sits across from Wendy and scans the unassuming faces laughing in free-spirited merriment around him. 

“What’s going on?” Wendy asks him. 

“I’m thinking of going back to Belfast.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I … I may have met someone there last year.”

Wendy’s eyebrow cocks, curiously. “You did?”

“Yes.” 

“You never told me this before. Is that why you came back acting the way you did?”

“What way?”

“You seemed … disoriented. Different. Maybe a little confused.”

Bill scoffs a laugh. “Yeah. Confused.”

“What was so confusing about a one-night stand in Belfast?”

“I can’t even begin to explain.” Bill says, shaking his head. “I just know that I have to go back and see if … if it’s something.”

“Have you had any contact with this person since then?”

“Once. They um … called while I was in Miami.”

Wendy’s brow furrows with intrigue. She’s undoubtedly noting his careful obfuscating of pronouns and the strangeness of a random hook-up in a city across the ocean finding him in Miami. He wonders if he’s made a huge mistake by admitting the fling to her. 

“It’s mutual for me to go back there this year.” Bill pushes ahead, focusing his gaze on the bottom of his beer mug. “So I think I should go, see if it … I don’t know - makes things less confusing.”

Wendy studies him quietly for a long moment before nodding her head. She’s knowing when not to push again. 

He lets out a slow breath, and shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I know this is strange, and it isn’t like me at all. I’m questioning the logic myself.”

“It is like you if it’s what you want.” Wendy says, “In fact, if it pulls you up out of the slump you’ve been in since the divorce, I encourage it. But I’d like to meet this person sooner rather than later. It must be pretty serious if you’re willing to cross oceans to understand your feelings.”

“I’d like for you to meet them, too, but it’s … complicated.”

“Well, I’ll give you your space, if that’s what you want. If you want to tell me about it when you come back this year, I’ll be right here.”

“Thanks, Wendy. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

She smiles, softly. “How about another drink?”

Relief surges through his chest as she leaves the booth to get another round from the bar. Now that the decision has been made, he feels like he can breathe again. His denial over the last several months felt like a noose around his throat or a lead weight sunken to his belly; tonight, he feels like he’s stepping up to the ledge of a twenty-story building, looking down at the distant ground below, and jumping. The freefall is both terrifying and exhilarating, his heart pounding and blood surging in a way it hasn’t for what feels like ages. He can only hope Holden is there in Belfast waiting for him, ready and willing to break the fall. 

  
  
  
  


Bill books the trip to Belfast two months in advance. Superstitiously, he insists on getting the same room at the same hotel that he had on his first visit to Ireland. Considering that Holden was able to find him thousands of miles away in Miami, he doesn’t think the creature will have any trouble locating him in Belfast, but a part of him is anxious that if he doesn’t create the same set of circumstances, he may not lay hold of the elusive faery-demon again. 

As the day of his departure grows closer, Bill vacillates between dread and anticipation. More than once, he thinks about cancelling the trip. On a day when reality is a little too grim - like when he’s talking to a serial killer who killed and mutilated an innocent woman - the logical half of his brain condemns the insanity of trying to make contact with an otherworldly creature again. It’s on the nights when he’s completely alone in his apartment, and the explicit magazines and silicone cock can’t appease the loneliness gnawing at the pit of his stomach that he knows he couldn’t have made any other choice. 

Holden is the only person - thing, creature, whatever - that knows all of his secrets and wants. He can’t even explain those things to Wendy, his closest friend. How could he deny himself the total pleasure and relief he’d felt with Holden when Holden himself is so insistent upon making it happen again? If he’s to only be happy for two days out of the year, shouldn’t he take it without hesitation? 

On the morning of October 30th, Bill boards the flight bound for Ireland. To soothe his nerves, he accepts the stewardess’ offer of bourbon which he nurses fastidiously for most of the flight. By the time the veiny outline of Belfast begins to emerge from the clouds, he’s only slightly buzzed and still humming with nervous anticipation. 

Stepping outside the airport, the city smells and feels just as he recalled. Almost nothing here has changed except for him and his expectations of this vacation. 

Bill takes a taxi over to the hotel. The same girl is working the front desk. When he hands over his ID for her to check him in, she studies it with faint recognition. 

“Do you remember me?” Bill asks, “I was here last year.”

“Oh yeah,” She says, squinting at him with intense blue eyes, “We got a lot of guest complaints about noise that weekend.”

“Oh.” He says, his face going hot. 

“I hope you have another rip-roaring time here in Belfast.” She says, grinning, amused with his embarrassment. 

He quickly takes his ID and room key, and flees for the stairs leading up to the second floor. He slows down as he reaches the door of his rented room. Drawing in a deep breath, he wills his hands to stop shaking, and unlocks the door. 

The same ugly wallpaper stares back at him. The same forest green duvet and white sheets. The same threadbare, gauzy curtains hanging over the ancient, wooden window frame. 

Shuffling across the room, Bill unlatches the window, and lifts the pane by a few inches. A cool breeze gusts into the room, followed by the less romantic din of traffic and pedestrian chatter. 

Suddenly, it feels like a small eternity before the clock strikes midnight and All Hallow’s Eve extends into the hours when the  _ púca’s _ powers are fully unveiled. 

  
  
  


Bill takes a walk by the Lagan River with no particular direction in mind other than to find something to eat for dinner before sequestering himself in his hotel room. He walks past a number of options before stopping at a shop serving soup and sandwiches, a light enough option considering what he’s preparing to do. Earthly rules don’t apply to he and Holden’s interactions, of course, but he doesn’t think he can stomach much more with the nerves writhing in his belly. 

After eating, he walks a bit further until he finds a shop serving all manner of mouth-watering baked goods. He asks the clerk for a raspberry pastry having really no idea where he’d purchased the one for Holden last time but figuring the jelly-filled dessert will be enough to entice the creature. 

With the pastry in a paper sack, he heads back toward the hotel. A convenience store on the corner completes the night’s recreation with a bottle of milk and a six-pack of beer. He carries his purchases back to the hotel room, and spends the rest of the evening sprawled on the bed aimlessly watching television. 

He can hardly think about sleeping, but the six-pack helps. He smokes three cigarettes, one after the other, trying to quell his anxiety. Finally, as the sun is going down, he sets the milk and the pastry out on the nightstand, leaves the window wide open, and crawls beneath the sheets naked. 

For a long time, he lays awake staring at the red numbers on the clock ticking past ten and eleven o’clock. He thinks if he just keeps his eyes open for another half an hour, he’ll notice the exact moment when Holden appears, perhaps flying through the open window in the form of the raven; but his eyelids grow heavier and heavier until they slip shut. 

It feels like only a moment has passed when he startles awake again to moonlit shadows and the clock reading 12:23. The warm air drifting past the window smells of rain and spice, an earthy mix slightly burned and still burning, a scent he could not define nor forget. 

Pushing up onto his elbows, Bill scans the room with bleary eyes, and stops abruptly when he meets the burning, red stare needling into him from across the room. 

Holden is sitting in the recliner in the corner in the same black robe he had worn last time. His legs are folded at the knee, causing the front of the robe to split open across his pale thigh, almost exposing his hip. The pastry is gone from the nightstand, and he’s sipping the last of the milk. 

“Am I dreaming?” Bill whispers, his pulse thudding and his skin tingling. 

“No,” Holden says, sounding pleased. He rises from the chair, and leaves the emptied milk bottle behind as he crosses the room. “You came back, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then it isn’t a dream.” 

Holden approaches the bed, unlacing the front of the robe.

In an instant, Bill's belly is hot with bracing desire. He’d spent so much of the last year memorizing how Holden looked in his mind, but those faint imaginings pale in comparison to the real thing standing right in front of him. 

He tosses aside the bed sheets, and moves closer to the edge of the bed. 

“What about that night on the beach? Was that a dream?” 

Holden shakes his head. “No.”

“How did you do it?”

“I told you. If you open yourself and try, you can see me. You wanted to see me that night so you did.”

“I didn’t realize that I did. I was just out there by the water looking for answers.”

“And there I was.” Holden murmurs, smugly. 

Bill shakes his head ruefully as the robe slips from Holden’s shoulders. It pools at his feet, leaving him naked and dazzling, his pale skin glowing like cream in the moonlight. Bill has never seen anything more beautiful, so perfect in every way; and to think, he’d tried to stop this from happening last year. 

“I tried not to think about you.” Bill whispers, tentatively outstretching his fingers toward Holden’s bare hip. “You don’t even know how fucking hard I tried.”

“I know a little bit.”

“Yeah, you know everything, right?”

“Mmm, I know you tortured yourself trying not to think about me, thinking about me, touching yourself thinking about me …”

Bill lays hold of Holden’s hip, and rises to his feet to press their bodies close. Holden’s skin is hot, firm, and unyielding. The density of him is more complex than this form appears, remaining stationary even as Bill crowds against him. 

“You fucking little …” Bill begins in a growl, pressing his forehead to Holden’s. 

Holden chuckles delightedly at his frustration. He leans forward for a kiss, but Bill stops him with a hand on his jaw. 

“No, wait.”

“What?” Holden whispers, nudging Bill playfully in the ribs. “You want me to force you again? Is that it? You like playing hard to get?”

“No,” Bill says, scowling. “The opposite. I want this. I’ve accepted that. I just … I don’t want you to kiss me.”

“Why not?” 

“Your saliva. It does things to me. To my head.” Bill says, running his thumb across Holden’s lower lip. “I can’t think straight when you kiss me.”

“That’s how I like it.”

“I know, but I don’t want to be sedated or drugged. I want to be awake.” Bill whispers, pressing his eyes shut and drawing in a shuddering breath. “I want to know that  _ I _ want this.” 

Holden is unusually quiet for so long that Bill eventually opens his eyes just to assure himself that the creature is still standing in front of him. He’s there, no more than an inch away, staring up at Bill with those dissecting red eyes. 

“Awake.” Holden murmurs, running his palm down Bill’s chest to where his heart is pounding against his breastbone. “I can do that. I can keep you awake all night, Bill. Painfully aware of how much you want this, how much you want my cock. It’s going to be so much that you can hardly take it. You’ll never feel anything this intense again. It’s going to make you ache, and burn, and scream, and cry.”

Bill almost stops breathing, but the staggered hiccup of his lungs jolts into action once more when Holden shoves him back down to the bed. He lands with a grunt, and sinks back toward the sheets, mute except for the whine climbing in his throat. 

Holden crawls eagerly between his compliant thighs, a smile slashing devilishly across his pretty, pink lips. 

“You humans aren’t meant to experience me sober and not intoxicated. You could barely stand it the last time. Remember how you begged and cried?”

Bill nods, but his throat is twisted up in knots as Holden’s grasp moves under his knees, pushing his thighs up to his chest and leaving his cock and asshole exposed. He’s already getting hard and pulsing with need, and Holden’s barely restrained magic has him oozing wetness from within. He wants to beg to be fucked, as if every nerve-ending is raw and primed with hours of fostered need when no more than ten minutes have passed. 

“Ohhh,” Holden croons, softly, leaning forward to smear wet kisses down Bill’s chest, “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Bill bites his lower lip against a whimper. His chest heaves and shudders to the caress of Holden’s mouth working down lower, finding his nipple hard and tender. He fists his hands into the sheets to hold them at bay from grabbing at Holden’s hair and neck. 

“You want me to make you cry and plead? Holden whispers in between fervent licks and suckles at Bill’s nipple. 

When Bill doesn’t immediately respond, he bites at the sensitive flesh with a fanged canine. 

“Ohh, fuck-” Bill moans, instinctively twisting away from the flash of pain.

Holden chases after his retreating chest, clamping his mouth hard on the bit of tender skin. His other pair of fingers locate Bill’s left nipple, pinching and twisting hard. 

“Is that what you want?” Holden presses, lifting his head to let his hot breath singe Bill’s bitten chest. 

Panting and trembling, Bill cracks his eyelids open to meet Holden’s burning stare. A pitiful moan emerges from a place in his chest he can’t silence or control. 

“Yes …” He chokes out. 

Holden’s mouth tilts with a pleased smirk. “Wonderful. I’ve imagined nothing less for the last year.”

Bill is still reeling as Holden lowers his head again, and kisses his way down Bill’s belly. He stops short of where his cock is pulsing, only allowing the gust of his breath to wander over the swollen, sensitive flesh. 

Bill groans and strains toward the fleeting promise of stimulation. His legs begin to sink from their raised position against his chest, searching for purchase against the mattress, but Holden firmly shoves his knees back into place. 

“Lay still,” He orders, smoothing his hands down the back of Bill’s thighs and ass cheeks, “I want you on your back like this unless I have you on your knees - understand?”

Bill nods, vehemently. “Yes. Please.”

Holden exhales a pleased sigh. His touch drifts over Bill’s cock, and just that humming presence makes it twitch with fresh arousal. 

“Look at you …” Holden murmurs, his tone almost fond. “You’ve been thinking of this moment all year, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Bill breathes out, pressing his eyes shut.

His hips wiggle involuntarily against the sheets as Holden’s hand keeps ghosting over him, barely grazing the shaft where veins are flush and throbbing, his balls where he’s taut and full with pent-up need. 

“You touch yourself thinking about me …” 

It isn’t a question, but Bill is still compelled to answer, breathlessly, desperately, “All the time.”

Holden hums, satisfies. His palm settles, deft fingers curling around the shaft and clamping tight. 

The sudden burst of sensation is almost more than Bill’s alert, tingling skin can take. His back snaps into a stiff arch, and his toes curl against empty air. Holden’s touch is like an electric current buzzing through his veins, singeing everything within reach. He can’t breathe for long seconds - so long that he wonders if he’s going to pass out before Holden even manages to get his cock inside; but his lungs resume their fragile heaving as Holden pumps his hand lazily over the shaft, drags his palm across the leaking head, and moves down to fondle his balls. 

“Oh fuck … fuck-” Bill curses, nails tearing at the sheets, “Holden …”

Holden’s hand curls around the top of his ballsack, holding him in place while also stretching them out of the way so his mouth can move in, glazing wetly along the perineum before finding his asshole quivering and dripping with hot, enchanted lubricant. 

Bill grabs desperately at Holden’s hair as his tongue swirls in swift, devilish circles, lapping up his oozing desire, and massaging the stiff clench of muscle into languishing acceptance.

It’s as if every fiber of him is exposed and cannibalized for pleasure purposes; even the slightest graze of the soles of his feet against Holden’s shoulders shoots through him like fire. The need wants to claw its way out of him, through every tiny pore, from every benign, subcutaneous layer until he finds relief in the expulsion of desire that he’s carried with him for the length of the year. He realizes all of his feeble attempts at masturbating and assuaging these needs with silicone and magazines were for naught - or rather, only served to intensify them. 

“Oh, Holden, please. Fuck, please …” He’s already begging, already conquered. 

Holden lifts his head. His mouth gleams with saliva and wetness. His eyes are beginning to smear with that overflowing, lava red. 

“I had almost forgotten how you tasted.” He whispers, releasing Bill’s genitals as he prowls up between his thighs, “Like desperation, desire, humiliation.”

Bill presses his eyes shut against Holden’s boring stare. It’s too late to second-guess his choices, and he wouldn’t have backed out even if he had been given the opportunity despite Holden’s brusque reading of his deepest, hidden needs. 

“Like a man who wants to be taken, forced down into submission,” Holden continues, his voice going husky and low. He crowds between Bill’s legs, pressing the shaft of his cock against Bill’s slick cleft. Bill almost cries at the sensation, the promise of satisfaction. “Like you want to be fucked mercilessly, like you want me to break you.”

Bill is nodding, panting, sniffling. “Please …”

Holden grunts softly in triumph, and guides his cock up against Bill’s asshole. 

Bill shouts out a choked exclamation, and seizes against the sheets. The slightest contact between them is almost more than he can bear as it sets him aflame. He wants to crumble, doesn’t have any reason not to. 

“There, there …” Holden murmurs, almost soothing as he slides his cock into Bill’s eagerly accepting body, “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes …” Bill moans, almost choking on his own saliva in his rush to get the affirmation out. 

Holden thrusts slowly against him, taking his time fitting his cock all the way down to the hilt. 

Bill can feel every inch pressed torturously into him, every second of his body stretching open, trembling, submitting to the mounting pressure. He tries not to whine and cry through every part of it, but Holden’s cock seems to expand within him, seems to reach deeper than ever before as if it’s taking up every inch of available space inside his bowels. 

“Fucking … God-” Bill chokes out, then presses his hand to his mouth to silence the babbling curses. His nostrils flare hard against panicked breaths, and he bites into his palm in a failing attempt to bring himself under control. The tiny shaft of pain he feels is drowned in the pulsating pressure of Holden’s cock rocking persistently against his prostate. 

“Ahh, yes …” Holden sighs, relaxed with bliss from above him. 

Bill cracks his pinched eyelids open to glimpse Holden above him, hips slapping rhythmically against his backside, head tilted back in an abject pleasure. His own body is locked into an unnatural arch, hands twisted into gnarled fists in sheets, feet curled up against Holden’s chest in a tenuous attempt to mitigate the power of Holden’s big, hard cock rutting into him. 

“How is it?” Holden asks, red eyes glimmering open to peer down at Bill’s mangled expression of overwhelmed need and sensation. 

Bill carefully moves his palm away from his mouth, and immediately gasps in a stammered breath. “G-good.”

“Better than fucking yourself with some insufficient, plastic fake thing?” Holden murmurs, mouth curling into a roguish smile. 

Bill wants to cry with humiliation, but he turns his face away instead, squeezing his eyes shut against the sting of tears. “Yes.”

Holden’s pace picks up, working his cock like a hammering piston into Bill’s quaking body. The bed protests beneath them, offering up the wail of springs and the slight thump of the frame hitting the wall; but Bill can’t think about another noise complaint. 

Holden is over him, eyes alight with satisfaction, and he’s still pressing, still impatient to know: “Better than jerking off over and over again, thinking that just one more orgasm is going to purge me from your mind?”

“ _ Yes _ .”

“Better than staring at strangers in a magazine, and pretending it’s them fucking you instead of me?”

“ _ Yes!”  _ Bill shouts, his voice tearing from his chest in a guttural cry. 

Holden pulls out abruptly, and flips him over onto his stomach. 

Bill’s mind swims with overstimulation, horror, and desire as Holden guides him up onto his knees, and presses his cock back to his hole that’s longing for more. 

“Beg me for it.” Holden says in a voice that’s so quiet yet compelling, commanding. 

“Please …” Bill whimpers, hiding his face in the sheets, “Jesus God, Holden, I’m begging you. Please, fuck me. I want it so bad-”

“You want my cock so bad.” Holden whispers, rubbing the blunt head against Bill’s quivering hole. “Say it.”

“I want your cock …” Bill whispers, his whole body shuddering beneath a wave of ashamed heat. “Fuck, please. I need it.”

Satisfied with his simpering, Holden thrusts his cock back inside.

From this angle, the impact echoes like a lightning strike from his core through the rest of his body. Beyond his own volition, Bill arches forward in a scrambling attempt to ease the powerful blows landing within him, hard against his prostate with every slap of Holden’s hips. He wants to scream  _ I can’t take it _ , but he can - he can if he stops resisting, if he lets himself cry and come apart the way he had on their last night together. 

Holden only pauses long enough to reposition him with his knees stretched open wider and lodged at an angle beneath him so that the simple grip of Holden’s fist in his hair keeps him trapped in an arched, subservient crouch beneath him. His leverage is entirely removed as the deep, pounding thrusts resume, rubbing him raw, pushing him to the brink. 

Bill grabs at the headboard to brace himself as Holden’s fervid thrusting threatens to rend him in two. His mouth is stretched wide open, but the cry to match the pleasure and agony crashing through his body is tied up in hollow silence. Stars dapple his vision while he feels the world unravel, his body falling through layers of dimension and pleasure, sinking further and further from the reality of the hotel room. All he can feel is the mounting pleasure, a hot coil wrapped around his groin drawing tighter and tighter with every collision of their bodies. 

“That’s it, that’s it …” Holden's voice is a broken, raspy whisper, “Cum for me.”

Bill feels himself tipping over the edge, but it all seems to happen in slow motion, an agonizing stretch of eternal seconds before it crashes through him. When it does hit, the cry that he’d been holding in the back of his throat breaks free into a guttural wail. He cums hard, and every muscle in his body squeezes and clamps, riding high on the wave of pleasure sweeping through him. He feels its tingling bliss in his feet, his fingers, his head, everywhere. 

Release gushes from him over and over again, but he’s already distracted from his own pleasure; Holden is climaxing within him, moving in concert with Bill’s own orgasmic convulsions. The splash of wet heat inside him is a shocking, consuming sensation after a year of absence, and a stunning marker of possession inside his body that only he and Holden are aware of. 

As the pleasure ebbs, Bill sinks down against the sheets. He’s trembling and gasping. The objective investigator inside his head asks him if he’s in shock. He doesn’t know anymore. All he knows is that this is too real, too intense to be a dream. 

Holden pulls out of him, triggering the dull ache of opened vacancy inside him. He can feel cum dripping out of his hole and down his legs. He’s so wet everywhere. He can’t tell if the thought makes him want to hide in shame or stay on his knees for another hard fuck. 

Sinking down to the sheets on his belly, Bill ignores the mess of his release absorbing into the fabric for the relief of resting his drained, trembling limbs. 

Holden stays wedged between his legs even as his spent cock slides free. Bending over Bill’s prone, shivering body, he presses soft, searching kisses to Bill’s perspiring nape. 

“Is this still what you want?” 

Bill purses his lips against the whimper Holden’s nurturing kisses stir in his throat. He can feel every fiber of his body, as if Holden is taking him apart on a microscopic level. 

“Yes.” He whispers, hoarsely. 

“Good.” Holden says, mouth following the dip of Bill’s spine between his shoulder blades and down the middle of his back. “I’m just beginning with you …”

Bill shudders through a wave of tingles that register from beneath Holden’s mouth nuzzling purposefully down the sweaty dip of his spine and along the rise of his backside. He hesitantly moves his legs further apart, and arches his hips. His body is already raw and sore, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing - only he’s sober enough to be doing it, awake enough to realize that he’s driving himself toward an edge of physical destruction he might not be able to take. But he doesn’t want it to stop, not for one second, not when he feels so completely alive. 

Holden kisses the back of his thighs ever so gently before making his way between Bill’s ass cheeks where his wicked tongue strokes languidly, lapping up oozing release. 

“Ohh ..” Bill groans, clutching at the sheets. His hips arch toward the promise of more automatically, blatantly begging. 

Lifting his head, Holden drags his fingertips down the cleft, and eases his index inside. 

Bill stiffens but doesn’t resist. His belly is getting hot again even as his spent cock aches with competing impulses of exhaustion and arousal. 

“You haven’t let anyone else touch you?” Holden asks, sounding inordinately curious though Bill is certain he already knows the answer. 

“No …”

“A whole year alone?”

“Yes.” 

“A whole year dreaming of me fucking you again?”

“Yes.” 

“Hmmm,” Holden hums, pleased. He probes his finger deeper into Bill’s fucked, wet hole. “That’s good. You’re all mine, Bill. This tight, needy little hole belongs to me, and I’m going to fill it with my cum again and again. I’m going to pump you full of it until you can’t take it anymore.”

Bill bites into the pillow, but he can’t stop the helpless, eager groan that surges from his chest. When Holden’s finger retreats and his mouth touches down again, he digs his knees into the mattress, and rocks back against the erotic caress. 

The slithering heat of Holden’s tongue lathers him with saliva before creeping inside with its pervasive reach that ignites renewed desire. It takes up a gradual yet firm rhythm, building simmering arousal up from drained lethargy, urging Bill’s cock to twitch with a mounting ache once more. The warm stroke of his palms over Bill’s asscheeks and thighs keeps him relaxed and secure, rocking lazily back into the ministrations until it begins to become too much, and he’s panting, groaning, grinding back against Holden’s face. 

“Fuck …” Bill groans, lifting his face from the sheets to peek over his shoulder. 

Holden’s eyes slide open to watch him like two red flames poised above his backside. His tongue keeps moving, a quiet groan uttered from his throat adding a deep layer of erotic vibration. 

“Oh, fuck, that feels so good.” Bill whispers, maintaining the stare even as he feels himself begin to tremble. The sense of shame he always drags into these encounters fades away below the vulnerable intimacy of looking into Holden’s eyes while he offers such exquisite pleasure. 

Holden hums another response, and grasps Bill’s ass cheeks tighter to draw him back into the firm penetration of his tongue. Slowly, he pulls Bill up onto his knees again, positioning them wide apart so that he can reach his hand between them and cradle Bill’s hardening cock. 

“Oh my God …” Bill groans, hips lurching at the slightest caress.

He doesn’t understand how he can be so hard again, but he’s twitching desperately in Holden’s palm, skin bursting with a compounding pulse that makes him think he must be halfway to orgasm already. 

“Please …” He whispers, hips rocking needily between Holden’s mouth and hand.

Holden’s tongue slides out of him, replaced faintly by the hot rush of his breath across the softened skin and drizzling saliva. 

“Please?” 

“Please, I want you again.” 

Grasping Bill by the shoulder, Holden pulls him upright on his knees, and crowds up behind him. Bill’s head spins with the sudden movement, but he leans back into the steady warmth of Holden’s chest, eyes slipping shut against the divine sensation of Holden’s hard cock pressed to his pleasured hole again. 

“I want you, too.” Holden murmurs against his ear, breath scalding down his neck. “I want to take you like this all night. Today, tomorrow, as many times as I can.”

Bill tries to muster a response, but all he can do is cry out as Holden’s cock thrusts into him again. He remembers that first night, the way he’d fought and resisted; now as Holden’s arms wrap around him and hold him close, he wants to fold even deeper into the embrace, and lodge himself between Holden’s inhuman rib bones and somewhere against his conjured, surging heart. 

He’s so tired of fighting, of lying to himself about compulsions whose means and ends are too pleasurable to deny. There doesn’t seem a point any longer as Holden rocks persistently into him, runs his hands down Bill’s body, draws his cock into a thrilling embrace. When he cums this time, he isn’t kissed or drugged, resisting or deceiving himself. He marvels at the sensation of Holden’s cum filling him, and the discordant duet of their choked, raspy cries bringing alive the dead silence of the night. 

After what seems too brief a time, he’s emerging from the euphoria of orgasm, drained and limp, whimpering and shuddering. Gently, Holden’s hands guide him down to the sheets. He goes willingly, and rolls complacently onto his back to find Holden gazing down at him with disheveled curls draped over his forehead, red eyes all aglow, and his mouth set with a fond smile. 

“I’ve thought of doing that all year long,” Holden says, stroking his cheek. 

Bill’s voice is a hollow rasp on the first try, but at last, he manages to whisper, “Was it everything you dreamed?”

“Yes.” Holden murmurs, bending closer, but stopping short of kissing him, “You’re everything I’ve ever dreamed of, Bill.”

Bill frowns. Maybe his brain has gone beyond reality. Maybe Holden really broke him this time. He must be imagining this almost loving tone in Holden’s voice. 

“What the hell did you do to me?” He whispers. 

“Everything  _ you’ve  _ been dreaming of.”

“No, I mean … what the hell …?”

Holden laughs softly, and presses the kiss meant for Bill’s mouth to his forehead. “Take a nap,  _ a rúnsearc _ . There’s so much left of the night …”

Bill wants to ask Holden what that means.  _ A rúnsearc _ . It must be something passionate for the way Holden whispers it so fervently against his hair; but he doesn’t have the sense to press for translation or even a response as his eyelids drift shut. 

In darkness, he doesn’t dream; he rests in a way he hasn’t for months. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "A rúnsearc" is an Irish Gaelic term of endearment that means "secret love" ❤
> 
> If you're still reading this silly story, let me know what you think so far. I have really no plan for how this will end aside from a few rough ideas, but it's the only thing getting me through life right now lol I hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

When Bill emerges from the daze of deep sleep the next morning, he’s alone again. A glance at the clock past bleary eyelids informs him that “morning” is perhaps too generous a term. A full twelve hours have elapsed since he awoke to Holden's prickling presence in the chair across the room, but he must have been up for half that time, physically driven to the brink with Holden’s mouth on him or cock inside him in between brief naps. 

Rolling onto his back, Bill pushes the sheets away from his chest, and rubs his eyes until he’s alert and prepared enough to take account of his body. Peeking from between his fingers, he glimpses his chest peppered with hickeys. Faint bruising in the shape of handprints fan over his hips, dispersing into a palette of deep purple, blue, and pink across his thighs. Everything aches, and this morning, unlike last year, he can remember the origin of every pang and raw burn. 

_ Jesus Fucking Christ,  _ He thinks as his belly jolts at the crystal clear memory of Holden, somewhere in the midst of the third or fourth round, biting him on the neck and chest, whispering low and raspy, “I could devour you.” At that moment, Bill had wanted to beg him to do it. Anything for the pleasure not to come to an end. 

But it had. It always does. And he’s left feeling this way: as equally consumed by his needs as he is horrified by them. 

Bill doesn’t feel much like moving from the sheets, but the idea that Holden might glean far too much satisfaction from leaving him bed-ridden merits motivation. Forcing himself upright, he eases his legs over the side of the bed.

When he reaches for his cigarettes on the nightstand, he notices the emptied milk bottle pinning down the corner of a small slip of paper printed with the hotel letterhead. Holden’s handwriting is peculiarly neat. 

_ Bill,  _

_ You’re going to wake up alone, but before you protest, let me assure you that I, too, find it a pity since I would love to stay to watch you wake and moan with the consequences of last night. Don’t worry, I’ll be back tonight, and I will try my utmost to be gentle. _

_ P.S. I will kiss you tonight. Ravenously. You will not stop me.  _

Bill bites his lower lip against an unbidden smile. He wants to be annoyed with the obnoxiously confident tone of the note. The smug bastard didn’t even sign it or leave some sentimental closing like “sincerely.” He would have settled for “warm regards.” Instead, he’s left with the promise that Holden will entirely divest him of his faculties with a passionate kiss this evening - and the warm buzz of anticipation in his belly that welcomes the idea. 

Martialing his longing, Bill limps from the bed to the bathroom to get himself cleaned up. He’d been smart this year, and packed accordingly. Pain killer, douche, ice packs. The first aid kit requirements after a night with a creature of the Underworld. 

This time, when he kneels down to use the douche, even the protesting scream of strained muscles can’t rouse regret. Every moment with Holden last night glows and shimmers like blown glass in his mind, resplendent with varying shades and shapes of elongated tension, shattered needs, and the cooling, mangled wreck of the aftermath. If he closes his eyes and focuses just right, he can relive them behind his eyelids, and each one is just as pleasurable as the last. 

Once he’s put himself back together as well as he can manage, he dresses for the chill that has descended on the city, and leaves the hotel. He doesn’t have a plan for the day aside from nourishing his famished body. He began with Holden last night by satisfying his carnal desires, and this morning, he’s craving an ample breakfast and a few stiff cups of coffee. 

Bill walks until he finds a restaurant serving breakfast. Sitting alone by the window, he watches the pedestrians march past, and tries not to search too desperately for a pair of red eyes among them. 

  
  
  


Holden is gone all day. 

Bill occupies himself by walking around the city, and ends up on the sidewalk where Holden had saved him from being struck by a car last year. Having no intention of purchasing sage or any other cleansing product, he goes into the Wiccan shop Anita referred him to out of pure curiosity.

The store is a carefully curated aesthetic of witchery in which he doesn’t fit in. Ignoring the sideways glances from other tattooed and dreadlocked patrons, he trolls the shelves with brewing intrigue. He doesn't recognize a use for many of the items, but a large section of the store caters all manner of crystals with a card by each one explaining its spiritual and physical healing properties. 

A burnished, red crystal that reminds him of Holden’s eyes after they’ve cooled and melted in the wake of relief catches his gaze. Taking one of the smooth stones from the shelf, he weighs its calm energy against his palm. 

The identification card reads:  _ Red Jasper. Spiritual properties: brings feelings of peace and tranquility, gently stimulates your energy, and helps you to face your problems. Healing properties: increases blood flow to the circulatory and digestive systems as well as the sexual organs of the body.  _

He can’t deny that he could use some help in both areas. Ignoring how foolish he feels, he purchases a satin bag of the red jasper stones, and walks back to his hotel with them tucked in his coat pocket. 

After ordering room service, he decides to stay in for the rest of the night. Through the open window, he can hear a street parade a few blocks over and the muted din of traffic and nearby restaurants and pubs. The city is still very much awake and alive with Halloween celebrations. It’s the ripest time for the  _ púca  _ to show itself with plenty of drunk humans walking around Belfast to entice the mischievous creature. 

Bill is alarmed by the sudden bolt of jealousy. He tries to dismiss it, but the thought plants itself deep in his mind, right beside the memories of last night’s intimate moments. The thought of Holden approaching anyone else tonight makes his stomach burn. 

Struggling to push aside the acid sting of envy, Bill sprawls on the bed with a cigarette, and flicks on the television. While a rerun of _ Friday the 13th  _ plays to an inattentive audience, he glances over at the little sack of red jasper sitting on the nightstand beside the empty milk bottle. Leaving his cigarette perched at the corner of his mouth, he grabs the bag, and unties the silky drawstring. One of the cool stones slides into his palm, and he holds it up to the light. Except for a few darker veins, the color almost resembles blood. 

“Thinking of me?”

Bill startles from his reverie with a gasp, and scrambles upright to see Holden sitting on the bed beside him. He’d made no sound upon appearing. 

“Jesus Christ,” Bill pants, clutching his hand over his pounding heart, “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you’d be expecting me.” Holden’s tone carries a disingenuous ring despite the hand laid soothingly on Bill’s arm. 

“We humans may not have magic or special powers, but at least we have the common courtesy to knock before coming in.” Bill says, jabbing a hand at the closed door of the hotel room which had afforded him little protection from supernatural exposure. 

“How quaint.” Holden says, disillusioned with the very prospect as he crawls across the bed to straddle Bill’s lap. He drapes his arms around Bill’s neck. “Have you missed me terribly?”

Bill stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray, and glares up at him. 

“Just say yes.” Holden proposes, leaning down to warm Bill’s cheeks with his smoky breath. 

Bill turns his chin away before their mouths can connect. “Wait a minute.”

“What now?”

“Where have you been?” 

“Out and about.”

“Doing what?” Bill asks. He unlaces the tie of Holden’s robe, too propelled by desire to let the needling jealousy stop him.

Holden's fanged teeth flash from behind his lips as Bill pushes aside the silky folds of the robe to expose his hard cock and his thighs quivering with mounting energy around Bill’s hips. 

“Magic tricks.” He murmurs, shaking his shoulders to make the robe fall away entirely. “What’s expected of me.”

“Ensnare any unwitting humans while you were at it?” Bill asks, his voice carrying an unintentional tremble as he studies Holden’s unblemished, ivory skin and easy state of viscous arousal. 

“Oh, Bill,” Holden says, chuckling softly, “Is that a hint of jealousy I detect?”

“And?” Bill bites out, defensively. “You spent all of last night reminding me that I belong to you. Is that a one way street?”

Holden’s mouth tilts in an infuriatingly satisfied smile. “Who would you rather belong to?”

“Just answer the question.”

“No, Bill. I didn’t fuck any other humans while I was gone. Happy now?” 

“No.” Bill murmurs, even as he leans closer. He eases his touch up Holden’s smooth, bare back with the red jasper stone in his right hand following the dip of his spine. 

Holden shivers. Actually shivers. Like he’s human enough to be moved by the cool pressure of the crystal touching him. Bill wonders again if any biological response outside Holden's own purposes is natural or proffered just for him.

“What would make you happy?” Holden whispers, his body undulating closer beneath Bill's yearning grasp.

“Not having to wait a whole year for this.” 

With their noses brushing, their open eyes are scarcely an inch apart. Holden’s red irises spark like solar flares. 

“You’ve been so lonely without me?"

"Mhm.” Bill grunts, squeezing the swell of Holden’s backside in his left palm. “But I thought you liked it that way." 

Holden pushes him back against the sheets, and Bill goes willingly. Underneath Holden's weight, his body still aches from last night, but he's ready to ignore it for the bliss he knows is coming. 

“I only want you aching and desperate when I'm touching you.” Holden whispers, running his fingertips down Bill's chest until goosebumps arise in a tingling wave. “I would change things if I could, Bill. Believe me.”

For a moment, the rampant need in Bill's veins cools. He's never heard Holden be so serious. 

“You would?” 

“Of course. I wouldn't willingly deny myself without good reason. I have almost anything I want …”

“But?”

Ignoring the question, Holden takes Bill by the wrists and guides them over his head. His nails lightly scratch over the tender pulse points, causing Bill's blood pressure to roar.

Bill lets his hands go limp and the curious questions die in his throat. 

Plucking the red jasper stone from Bill's hand, Holden holds it aloft and studies the smooth curves and veins of minerals. 

“I left you sore and bruised to make certain you would be thinking of me all day long,” He whispers, shifting an impish gaze to Bill. “But now I think that won't do for what I want tonight.” 

Bill blinks as Holden leans forward and presses the crystal to his mouth.

“Don't you agree?” Holden asks, smoothing the cool stone across Bill's lower lip. 

Bill nods.

“I thought so. That’s why you bought it. Red jasper does well enough for primitive, human purposes, but it could do with a little enchantment.” 

Bill’s breath hitches in the back of his throat as Holden presses the stone to the seam of his lips. He feels dizzy with the rush of need though Holden hasn’t kissed him yet, as if his body knows down to his core what’s coming. Pavlovian. His cock has been trained like a dog. 

“Open your mouth,” Holden murmurs. 

Bill tentatively parts his lips, almost whines as Holden presses the red jasper past his teeth and down against his tongue. It tastes very faintly of minerals and earth, but any natural edges have been hewn and smoothed away into a rounded shape that fits perfectly between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He clamps his mouth shut around it so that he doesn’t choke, and breathes hard through his nose. 

“Good,” Holden praises, dragging his thumb across Bill’s trembling lips. 

Eagerly, Bill tilts his chin up against the caress. The low groan bubbling up from his throat meets with the dense weight of the stone, creating a ricocheting vibration through his own skull. He wonders if he always sounds this pitiful to Holden.

Bending closer, Holden expels warm and tangy breath against Bill’s cheeks along with an unintelligible whisper. The lilting phonetics of a strange language meld into a groan and the slow, firm stroke of his mouth taking Bill’s lips in a heated kiss.

Lifting his head to keep the stone from sliding against the back of his throat, Bill opens his mouth to the kiss. His pulse surges with anticipation right before Holden’s sweet, heady saliva infiltrates his mouth, its toxins working rapidly to melt any lingering resistance and drag a film of drugged complacency and bliss over his head. He hears the whimpers rising past his nostrils, muffled by the crystal and Holden’s persistent mouth, but he can’t make them stop - can’t think about how he’s letting this all happen, again and again. 

Holden’s tongue flicks into his mouth, nudging up against the quivering edges of Bill’s tongue and the slick, smooth stone held tenuously in place. Sliding a hand underneath Bill’s nape, he draws his head up from the pillow so that the stone can glide forward.

Bill feels the click of the red jasper against the backside of his teeth. He opens his mouth wider, eager and panting, almost choking on a thrilled gasp when Holden’s deft tongue curls inward to sweep the stone from Bill’s mouth to his own. The cool weight departs his tongue, leaving Holden’s saliva trickling unobstructed down the back of his throat. Swallowing it down, he sighs at the preceding headrush that makes his whole body prickle with awareness and lust. 

As Holden straightens, Bill settles back against the pillows, and drapes his arms over his head. He shifts impatiently under Holden’s rocking hips grinding deliberately into his groin where he’s beginning to throb. 

Above him, Holden’s pale skin glows with pink effervescence, a translucency that makes the network of veins across his inner arms and snaking through his cock pulsate purple and indigo. Fully erect, he’s perfectly endowed with length and girth that makes Bill’s insides quiver with longing; and his eyes brim with a volcanic, scorching red that burns down into their hypnotic, endless depths.

Bill expects he would be verbally gloating at the abject submission, but the stone held triumphantly in his mouth blocks the typical repertoire. Instead, the satisfaction is translated through decisive action, his hands wandering up Bill’s quivering belly and chest, and his mouth inclining to Bill’s neck. 

Bill stretches his throat open to the kiss, and releases a breathless sigh when the soft, warm stroke arrives. The euphoric sting of saliva settles into his skin, working swiftly below flesh and into bone. As the soft patter of Holden’s lips tracks its way downward, over terrain that he had bitten and sucked at the night before, he can’t feel the teeth marks or bruises any longer, only the compounding hum of arousal. 

Holden’s feverish lips lave his clavicle, the hollow at the base of his throat, at last moving down his shuddering sternum. With a sudden, cold thud, the red jasper exits his mouth and lands on the middle of Bill’s chest. Despite the warm pool of saliva it swims in, the surface of the stone is startlingly frigid as if it had just been pulled from a riverbed. 

Bill thinks this must be the enchantment Holden spoke of, but any logical thought fragments into the wind as Holden takes the stone between his thumb and index to guide it gradually over Bill’s chest. It makes a chilled path to his right nipple where Holden moves it in a slow circle, instantly drawing the sensitive flesh taut. 

“Oh, God,” Bill groans, his back straining into an implacable arch beneath a wave of shivers.

He works his eyelids open to glimpse the rhythmic motion of the wet, cold stone moving over his puckered nipple. Holden is applying just enough pressure to make it ache even as the hickeys fade from the tender, brutalized skin. His chest quakes and his skin prickles with competing hot and cold goosebumps as the red mineral glides slowly to his other nipple, matching one hard bud of skin to the other with the lightest, most devastating strokes. 

Bill’s fists, tangled up in the sheets, break free to smother a building cry with both hands clasped over his mouth. Holden’s saliva combined with the coldness of the stone triggers waves of shivers with every caress, and with them, an abundance of strangled whimpers. The gradual, light contact encourages his cock to throb unbearably, some kind of delicious, prolonged torture that he’s uncertain if he would stop even if he had the authority to do so. 

Holden chuckles softly from above him as he swirls the stone in a lazy, weaving line down the left side of Bill’s ribs, curating a strange, tickling sensation. At his hip, it nurses away bruises and quests upwards again. Nestling at the base of his sternum where he’s shaking with exhilarated breaths, it lingers just barely before beginning a slow, teasing descent down his belly. 

“Oh, fuck, please …” Bill moans into his palms, trying and failing not to squirm beneath the cool glaze of the stone which might have been a hot knife, opening him down the middle, exposing his every last desire. 

“Shh, shh,” Holden soothes, “Relax.” 

Bill pulls his fingers away from his eyes to cast a tremulous glare upward when Holden contradicts the suggestion by leaving the stone just above his navel where the surges of arousal keep knotting and twisting. 

“Relax?” He echoes, impetuously. 

Holden smiles. “You’re so impatient.”

“You make me impatient.”

Ignoring the remark, Holden slides his fingers deftly below the waistband of Bill’s boxers, and stretches the thin fabric back to expose his cock standing erect and throbbing. A sound of delight emerges from the back of Holden’s throat, as if he’s unwrapping the gift he always wanted on Christmas morning. 

Bill’s limbs feel like they each weigh ten pounds when he complies with Holden’s disrobing him. The scratch of cotton down his thighs twists a groan from the back of his throat, and this time, he doesn’t try to stop it. Holden had kissed him just briefly enough to leave him lucid, just long enough to take the edge away from his resistance. Now it’s if he’s been thrown from the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s side, watching his body swerve recklessly into the oncoming collision of Holden’s seduction. The twitch of his cock takes priority, divesting him of any notion of reserve or aplomb, and he stretches his legs open wide, silently and eagerly pleading with his glazed stare up at Holden. 

“Good, good …” Holden murmurs, stroking Bill’s quaking thighs with a hot, melting caress. 

His gaze roams eagerly over Bill’s splayed body, and Bill can all but feel it devouring him, taking little bites out of his flesh, rendering him subdued and aching. He can do little but moan as Holden takes the stone between his fingers once more, and guides it down Bill’s quivering belly. 

The smooth texture could have been soothing, but the mineral is so icy cold that Bill can’t relax or be still beneath its seeking journey toward his hot, pulsing center. He can feel everywhere that it's touched him, a chill cold enough to burn and sting. Still, he undulates his hips into the approaching caress, and moans out a breathless sound of arousal as it glides through his pubic hair, across the juncture of his hip, and over the bruises blooming at his inner thigh. 

Holden whispers some enchanting phrase, a low and throaty noise that Bill doesn’t understand but that makes every hair on his body rise with a warm tingle. It’s followed delicately by the pleased query: “How’s that?”

“Mmm …” Bill grunts out, cracking his clenched eyelids open to meet Holden’s red stare. “Good. It’s cold.”

“But it doesn’t hurt anymore, does it?”

Bill shakes his head. He can’t feel any bruises or pangs. Nothing except the warm pleasure churning between his thighs, working up his blood to surge harder and faster to his cock. 

Holden purses his lips against a smile as he transfers the jasper to Bill’s other thigh where the black and blue is quick to melt away into a rosy glow. It doesn’t stay long, just enough to make quick work of last night’s damages before drifting away. 

Bill’s breathing trips and seizes as Holden lifts the stone to his mouth again and licks it deliberately with a swipe of his long, pink tongue. The red jasper gleams and drips with an excess of saliva that dribbles down his fingers as he extends the stone to Bill’s body - more importantly, to his throbbing cock which lays fat and squirming against his belly, all veined with the engorged rush of blood and leaking at the tip with copious pre-come. 

“Oh, fuck-” Bill groans, his back stiffening into a tremulous arch and toes digging into the sheets as the stone settles against the swollen head. A wash of shivers needle down his spine and flare at his groin, conflicting impulses of heat and cold warring across his tortured flesh. 

Holden hums a soft chuckle as he moves the jasper in a deliberate line down the slight curve of Bill’s shaft, across pumping veins that want to explode at the lightest caress. 

Bill groans, helplessly, hips squirming for retreat on impulse, but unable to entirely reject the startling but thrilling sensation. He ends up in a strange, twitching tremble, as if he’s been possessed; meanwhile, Holden patiently strokes the length of his cock with the stone, up and down the shaft with aching pressure, over the head where he pushes its smooth edge firmly to the small furrow of his opening that leaks and aches, and just underneath of that where nerve-endings are burrowed in a sensitive cluster. 

By the time he’s finished, Bill is trembling and moaning, so sensitized and aroused that every touch feels like fire across an exposed nerve. As the cold, smooth surface of the jasper departs his shuddering body, Bill dares to look up at the creature hovering over him. 

A devilish smirk rests on the corners of Holden’s mouth. 

“P-please …” Bill chokes out, squirming impatiently against the sheets, “Holden-”

“Roll over.” 

Bill bites his lip against a rising whine. “What … what are you going to do?”

“ _ Roll over. _ ” Holden repeats, more firmly. 

“Fuck me …” Bill whispers, disentangling his hand from the sheets tor each for the promise of release, “Please, fuck me. Fuck me-”

Holden leans forward to silence Bill’s simpering with a deliberate kiss. Their mouths join in sloppy, hungry strokes, a rushing clash of saliva and throaty moans. Holden’s tongue curls deftly across Bill’s tongue, but his teeth come in right after, introducing a sudden shock of pain to Bill’s lower lip with a claiming bite. 

Bill pulls free, groaning softly. He tastes blood for half a second before Holden’s saliva takes over, seeping into the tiny laceration in a hunt for direct access to his blood stream. 

“Please,” He repeats, deliriously, as Holden’s forehead rests against his own, red eyes watching intensely as he crumbles. “I’m so hard. You’re torturing me...”

Unmoved by Bill’s submissive begging, Holden leans away, leaving his saliva humming on Bill’s lip. The aphrodisiac settles like a dense fog, stripping away his inhibitions. He has no more power than a rag doll as Holden turns him over onto his stomach, and moves between his legs.

Pressing a kiss to Bill’s neck, Holden traces the stone across the bunched muscle of his shoulder and the ridge of his shoulder blade. It nestles into the dip of his spine, garnering a bone-deep shiver from Bill who lurches and trembles to the delicate touch. His moans have yet to fade when Holden’s kisses follow the path of the stone, tracking heat over chill all the way down Bill’s back until they reach the base of his spine where his tailbone rises to meet the cleft of his ass. 

Much to his chagrin, Bill’s legs stretch open to accommodate, moving of their volition and need. He reaches up to cling to the support of the headboard while Holden slides the stone down into the cleft, lathering this most tender part of him with cold mineral and burning saliva. 

“Oh, fuck,” Bill curses as his whole body shudders against the strange, erotic caress. “Holden-”

Holden grasps the fleshy underside of his asscheek, and guides him into a taut arch, all open and exposed to the slick caress of the jasper. He can feel how raw and tender he is from last night’s extensive, fervent activities just before the sting melts away into a warm, pulsating hum. The smooth surface of the stone rubs up against him in a grinding circle, urging him to relax if not rock back against it. 

“Please …” He rasps out, barely able to form a complete thought beyond that helpless appeal. 

“You’re so close, aren’t you?” Holden asks, self-assured. 

“Yes, please …”

“Hmm, and I’ve barely touched you,” Holden observes, rubbing the stone harder until it’s smooth edges find leeway. 

Bill doesn’t know what’s about to happen or how Holden is doing this to him, but he’s beyond the point of caring. With his brain swimming in panicked need, he pushes his knees under himself, and thrusts back against the cool, unrelenting pressure of the jasper until his hole submits. He feels it slide in, still so cold, so much bigger than it appeared in Holden’s hand; and he can’t stop the choked cry of pleasure when it nestles itself deeply, with immense, unearthly gravity and forceful intention against his pulsating prostate. 

Holden’s fingers slip in behind it, locating the deliberate position of the stone, and guiding it down harder into a slight, rocking rhythm. 

Bill feels his eyes roll back, his body going both unbearably taut and helplessly limp. His insides are churning, a slick, hot mass of desire oozing and clenching with the tingling precursor of orgasm. It begins low in his belly, so deep in his core that he can’t begin to define it, and swells outward, mounting to a pressure so intense that he thinks he must be imploding, perhaps flatlining and kissing goodbye to this earth. 

Instead, he cums so viciously that his entire body convulses, and he thinks he hears himself scream in agonized bliss. He can’t hear it or feel his throat go raw and sore; he’s blind to everything except these thrilling seconds of relief, the spasms clamping hard at his core and spreading outward like a shockwave. Untouched, his cock releases a geyser of cum that spatters his belly and rolls down his thighs in thick, hot streams. The massive release of pressure and cascading relief courses through him as if he hasn’t cum for days, stretching on into shuddering spasms even after he’s spent and drained. 

When the climax abates, he drops down to the sheets, and presses his eyes shut, struggling to anchor himself to reality. A shrill, deafening ring invades his ears while his body deflates to a weak, trembling mass. 

The stone eases from his body as if moved by its own volition. Holden claims it in his palm, and lays down beside Bill with the red mineral held up to the light. His mouth is set in a bemused smile. 

“How did you …?” Bill begins, his voice all wrecked and breathless. 

Holden pushes up onto his elbow, and leans over to kiss Bill’s shoulder. “Do that?”

“Magic, right?” 

“Black magic.” Holden says, his mouth tilting deviously. 

He holds his hand out, and uncurls his fingers. The stone levitates from his palm, resting stationary and unwavering in mid-air with a single thought from Holden. 

Bill stares, his mouth slipping open. 

Holden snatches the jasper from the air, and lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “I’m not supposed to use it.”

“Couldn’t that get you into trouble?”

“Yes,” Holden says before shrugging flippantly, “But it was good, right? You came so fucking hard.”

Bill closes his eyes against the heat that’s quick to invade his cheeks. “Yeah…”

“Good.” Holden murmurs, sliding closer. He throws his leg over Bill’s hips, and slides a pair of fingers into his hair while his warm kisses bleed across Bill’s shoulder and neck. His breath tickles hotly at Bill’s earlobe, “I want to take care of you, Bill - the way no one else ever has. The way no one else ever will.”

Bill doesn’t have the will to protest momentarily. His body feels too good, like he’s floating up into the clouds with no stress or worry to bear him back down again. Sliding his arm around Holden’s waist, he pulls his clinging faery closer, and revels in a bliss he never thought he would achieve. 

  
  
  


Bill is surprised to awake the next morning to Holden still cuddled in the bed beside him. He hadn’t expected a creature of the Underworld to require sleep, but Holden is slumbering with his back turned to Bill, and his knees drawn up in the fetal position. 

In the warm, autumnal sunlight stretching with golden fingers past the curtains, his soft, pale back glows like flawless, infantile flesh that’s never been weathered or hardened by earthly forces. He has what humans would consider “birthmarks” scattered intermittently across his shoulders, a detail Bill is certain Holden had purposefully included when he perfected this form. It gives him the slightest flaw to make him appear more human, and though Bill is entirely convinced otherwise, there’s something comforting and endearing about the nuance. 

Pushing up onto his elbow, Bill scoots closer, and extends his fingers to touch the cluster of three birthmarks at the base of his neck. He’s never noticed them before; he’s always been underneath Holden, too pinned down and drugged into submission to try cataloguing all the tiny details of Holden’s body. 

He takes advantage now, moving his fingertips from one birthmark to the next until he reaches the hem of the sheets tucked around his midriff. Carefully moving the sheets away, Bill runs his knuckles down the convex of Holden’s curled back. Pale hairs at the base of his spine arise in response, the only warning Bill’s given that Holden might be aware of what he’s doing before his head pops up from the pillow. 

Holden’s blinking, red eyes quickly shed sleep in exchange for sparkling charm. “Good morning.”

“‘Morning.” Bill says, leaning closer to kiss the back of Holden’s neck. “I didn’t expect you to be here when I woke up.”

Holden sighs, and uncurls from the fetal position so that he can arch back against Bill’s back. “I shouldn’t be.”

“Will someone come looking for you?”

“No, but I won’t be able to account for what I’ve been doing.” Holden says, sounding nonplussed by the concept of his disobedience. 

“So, this is outlawed where you come from?” 

“Having sex with humans is a bit of gray area. It’s  _ this _ … carrying on an affair that’s universally frowned up.”

“I see,” Bill whispers, tucking his cheek to Holden’s neck, and focusing on his fingertips crawling across Holden’s bare hip and along the shuddering rungs of his rib cage. “You’re a bit of a rebel, huh?”

“Mm, yes,” Holden whispers, grinding back against Bill’s embrace with a pleased sigh, “I’ve always had a problem with authority, probably on account of my heritage.”

“Here on earth, I’m an authority. Is that what attracted you to me?”

“You could say that.” Holden says. He rolls around in Bill’s arms so that they can face each other, and traces Bill’s cheek with a soft fingertip, “I have a thing for big, strapping men who like getting fucked in the ass.”

“So there’s been others?”

“Yes.” Holden says, unabashed. “Bill, do you know how long I’ve been around?”

“Well, no …”

“Longer than you’ve been sleeping with other men.” Holden says, nonchalantly. “Longer than you’ve been sleeping with women - sleeping with people, period. Need I go on?”

Bill shakes his head, quietly. He, on the other hand, is a little bothered by the idea. This form Holden appears in is youthful and naïve, and his rebellious behavior even speaks to childish imprudence; but he doesn’t want to ponder it for too long because determining Holden’s age means considering the entire ecosystem of the Underworld, and what exactly constitutes “old” and “young” there. 

“What’s wrong?” Holden asks. 

“Nothing …”

“What?” Holden presses, catching Bill’s chin between his fingers and forcing him to look into his red, searing eyes. 

“You’re going to be around long after I’m gone then, huh?” Bill whispers. 

“Probably, yes.”

“Shit.”

“Don’t think about it, Bill. Forever is a long time. It’s better to live day-to-day rather than thinking of the future.”

“How can I not? My life is like a glimmer to you. A blip on the horizon - or the rear view mirror.” Bill says, pushing up from the sheets to rub his hands over his face. “Fucking hell.”

“Don’t put yourself into a crisis. It’s not that serious.”

“Well, it’s serious to me.” Bill snaps, casting him a glare. “I put my entire emotions on hold for a fucking year for you.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“But you want me to. You want me to belong to you and no one else. Meanwhile, you’ve fucked almost everything that moves.”

“Not everything-”

“More than I could ever manage in my lifetime.” Bill says, throwing up an exasperated hand. “Jesus Christ. I think I’ve lost my mind. I’ve actually gone crazy.”

“No, you haven’t. Please don’t tell me this is the first time you’ve entertained your mortality. You humans are so focused on death and the afterlife sometimes. You forget to live.”

Bill scoffs a choked laugh, and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. The aphrodisiacal haze of last night’s kisses has faded away, leaving him with a brutal hangover - the kind that makes him question his entire life and his choices. 

“Bill, please.” Holden says, putting a hand on his back, “Isn’t that what I’ve given you - a chance to live again? You were so unhappy when I met you last year. You wanted to crawl away and disappear. No one had touched you in a long time - not in the way I touch you. Not with intention or …. Or love.”

Bill braces his elbows against his knees, and cradles his face in his palms. He feels like he never left that beach in Miami, as if he’d stepped into the water without knowing it and now the waves are coming in over his head. 

“Love?” He mumbles into his hands. 

Holden’s hand drifts away from his back. Bill doesn’t hear him move, but in a few seconds, he’s crouched on the floor at Bill’s feet, staring up at him with those consuming, scarlet eyes. 

“Imagine your life,” Holden whispers, “You’re alone, you don’t fit in anywhere. You try, but you know you’ll always be different. You search for relationships that will make you happy, but every one of them disappoints you. Sometimes you have sex that feels good, you think you’ve found the key, and at long last, you can put aside your questioning. But then you wake up in the morning next to some stranger and realize it was just the alcohol numbing your real feelings. No one makes you feel alive until … until now. Until last year when you came to Belfast and we met.”

Bill pulls his hands away from his face to look down at Holden’s somber expression. Any trace of mischief is gone, replaced by a distinct desperation. 

“Now, take all of those experiences and double them - triple them.” Holden says, taking Bill’s hands and clutching them in his own, “That’s how I’ve felt, Bill. For _ decades _ .”

Bill presses his eyes shut. A part of him longs to accept what Holden is saying without question, but the scientist inside him begs to differ. This relationship goes beyond the bounds of reality, beyond any point of reference he has; in that case, he can’t trust himself or Holden to follow the usually acceptable guidelines of romance. There’s no blueprint for what they’re doing, and thus no rules, no limitations, nothing to stop them both from getting hurt beyond measure. 

“How do I know I’m not just an experiment to you?” He whispers, “A human guinea pig for you to exercise your black magic on and see what all you can do to me sexually before I either break or run away?”

Holden leans back on his heels, a wounded expression crossing his face. “You’re not.”

“No? Then why do you seem to enjoy torturing me so much? Pushing me as far as I can go - further even.”

“You enjoy it, too.”

Bill turns his head away, rubbing a hand over his mouth. Heat curls across his cheeks as the response, and its validity, sinks in. 

“Don’t try to tell me that isn’t true.” Holden says, climbing to his feet with a defiant huff. “I can tell when you’re lying, Bill.”

“Well maybe I can’t!” Bill exclaims, leaping to his feet to meet Holden’s burning stare, “I don’t know, Holden. I don’t know if I can trust myself because every time I think I have this insane fucking desire for you figured out, you come in and take my instincts and my logic away from me again. You make me stupid and compliant. You  _ force  _ that out of me; and I don’t know anymore if it’s what I want, or if it’s what you want and you’re  _ making  _ me want it.”

“I’ve never  _ made  _ you want what we’ve done. I’ve never cast any kind of spell on you to convince you that you’re gay - you already knew that. And I didn’t even kiss you the other night. Just like you asked, so you could prove it for yourself. What else do you want?” Holden demands, his brow furrowing into an angry scowl.

“I don’t know.” Bill says, throwing up his hands, “I don’t know anymore, Holden. What do  _ you  _ want from me?”

Holden lifts his chin, indignantly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean do you want me to be alone for the rest of my life except for the one time out of the year I see you?” Bill asks, jabbing an accusatory finger at his chest. “Do you want me to save myself for you? Never let anyone else touch me again so I can be all yours?”

Holden pushes Bill’s hand away from his chest, and takes a lunging step closer. His eyes are frothing with heat, not at all the kind of overflowing satisfaction from last night. The flares sparking from within their roiling depths aren’t the kind, radiating warmth of a hearth but licking hellfire. 

“Yes, Bill.” He growls, seizing Bill by the cheeks, “That’s exactly what I want. I would take you back with me if I could, make you mine and no one else’s.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because, you would die!”

They break apart with a jolt and paired grunts. 

Bill sinks down against the bedsheets, gazing up at Holden’s enraged, trembling figure with fear curdling in his belly. He’s known for a year that he’s entangled with something he doesn’t understand, but he’s never seen Holden like this and it’s terrifying. 

“That’s what happens to humans when they go to the Underworld,” Holden says, his voice taking on a low, mangled quality that doesn’t at all match his usual soft lilt. “You die. Is that what you want, Bill? To die for me?”

“No,” Bill whispers, swallowing back the knot in the back of his throat. 

“But you do want me,” Holden continues, sauntering forward to seize Bill’s jaw in one, powerful hand. “Look at me. Do you want me?”

Bill stares up at him, shaking. He doesn’t know why he’s nodding. Jesus, why can’t he stop?

“Then you  _ are _ mine.” Holden whispers, bending down to kiss Bill hard on the mouth. When he leans back, his breath is fiery hot, almost suffocating against Bill’s nostrils, “Forever.”

Bill squeezes his eyes shut, expecting to be thrown back against the sheets.

But the air coming through the open window goes cold with a November chill devoid of magic. His eyes tremble open to glimpse the hotel room vacant of Holden’s electric, luminescent presence. He’s alone again except for the roar of panicked thought in the back of his mind:  _ Just what the hell has he gotten himself into?  _

  
  
  


Bill smokes two cigarettes before his surging adrenaline and crashing nerves calm down. Laying back against the pillows, he stares up at the ceiling and watches the rays of sunlight shift angles past the curtains in their reach for midday. He doesn’t move for what feels like hours, letting his thoughts meander in endless circles of confusion, panic, worry, and relief. 

A part of him - the logical FBI agent inside his head - thinks that if Holden is angry enough to disappear and not come back, it would be for the best. He doesn’t need someone who is so easily swayed by jealousy, and can’t accept that Bill might not want to save himself for two days of pleasure out of the year; moreover, he doesn’t need someone he only sees two days out of the year. Period. End of story. 

So why doesn’t the logic stick? 

When Bill finally drags himself out of bed to get a shower, his gaze catches on the red jasper stones sitting on the nightstand, and his stomach knots with an unstoppable flash of arousing memory. 

Rushing to the bathroom, he climbs into the shower, and turns the water on hot. Huddled beneath the needling pressure of the water, he squeezes his eyes shut, and tries to put the recollection of the icy cold stone caressing his body into undeniable pleasure from his mind; but he’s already got a persistent erection just from the memory of how hard he came, and there’s really no use in turning down another orgasm. 

Bracing his left hand against the cool tile of the shower wall, he grasps his cock in his right hand, and warms himself up with a slow, thorough massage. A groan slips past his clenched jaw as the pleasure is quick to build. 

With his eyes squeezed shut, he can memorize Holden’s touch in his mind, his fingers grinding the red jasper against his prostate, and his eyes when he’d crawled between Bill’s legs and fucked him right after while Bill was still soft and pliant from orgasm. The rest of the night after the jasper had been a blur of sedating kisses, deliberate caresses, and long, yearning sessions impaled on Holden’s virile cock during which he hadn’t cum again for several hours - just enough memory to have Bill aroused and desperate again this morning. 

As the fresh orgasm forces him onto his knees on the shower basin, he silences the voice in the back of his mind that wishes Holden were still here with him and that he hadn’t tried to question the ineffable nature of their relationship. 

What’s done is done, he figures. He has three more days here in Belfast. It’s up to Holden if he shows back up during any of them or not. The rest is beyond Bill’s control. 

Despite his resignation, he spends a majority of the day in the hotel room, suppressing the realization in the back of his mind that he’s awaiting Holden’s return. He only leaves to get food, and when he comes back, he pushes the door open quickly in anticipation of Holden sitting on the bed. He comes up empty both times, frustrated with his own conflicting desires. 

That evening, he watches TV and nurses a beer until exhaustion overcomes him. Clicking off the television, he rolls over and falls asleep almost instantly. 

When he wakes again, the room is dark and a cold breeze rustles past the filmy curtains. In his sleep, he must have kicked away the duvet because he’s barely covered by the thin sheet around his waist, and his bare arms are awash with chilled goosebumps. Groping from the blankets, Bill rolls over, and glimpses a pair of red eyes watching him from the windowsill. 

“Fuck,” Bill mutters, pushing up onto his elbows with a start. “I thought you’d gone.”

Holden huddles on the sill behind the curtains, his arms crossed over his knees, and his chin balanced dejectedly over his forearm. 

“Did you mean what you said?” He asks, softly. “You’re not sure if you really want me?”

Bill sighs, and sits up to rub the lingering sleep from his eyes. “Holden, it may not feel like it to you right now, but it’s really fucking late. I’m exhausted.”

“You seemed capable of responding to me the last few nights at this time.” 

Bill scowls. “You’re leaving tonight, aren’t you?”

“When the clock strikes midnight. The end of November 1st.”

“You’re worried I won’t see you again because I won’t be looking for you, huh?” Bill asks. 

“Forever is a long time, but so is a year. And, Bill, last year without you felt like all the decades of my life combined.”

“Is this some kind of an apology?”

Holden sighs, and drops his feet down from the sill. He’s almost soundless as he moves, ducking from behind the curtain to cross the room. 

“So what if it is?” He asks, pausing a few feet from Bill’s bed, and toying anxiously with the belt of his robe. “Would you accept it?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t erase everything else.” 

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that a year  _ is  _ a long time.” 

Holden glances away, biting at his lower lip. “I know it’s even longer for a human.”

“A lot can change in a year. A lot can change in a few days.”

“I know that now.”

“Come here,” Bill suggests, extending his hand gingerly. 

Holden sulks to the bed, his head positioned low. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he takes Bill’s hand. His fingers are so warm. It always strikes Bill how warm he is, as if he has a low, crackling fire planted deep in his belly. 

“Look, you’ve given me something I couldn’t give myself,” Bill says, “That’s what your people do, isn’t it? You give the gift of insight and forewarning. You’ve opened my eyes to who I am - what I am. Because of that, I’m in a better place than I was a year ago, but maybe there’s a reason the authorities in your world outlaw this kind of relationship.”

Holden yanks his hand away, and casts Bill a shimmering glare. “You’re siding with them?”

“Not necessarily. I can’t side with people I’ve never met, but-”

“But what? We’re just supposed to go our separate ways, and forget how we made each other feel? I didn’t just give you the gift of insight. I didn’t just touch you.  _ You  _ touched  _ me _ .”

Bill suppresses an exasperated sigh, and scrapes a hand through his hair. 

“What do you want me to do, Holden?” He asks, “If I go with you, I die. If I stay, I’m alone for the rest of my life except for two days out of the year. Do you want to ask that of me when you’ve been dealing with it your whole life? It isn’t fair, and you know it.”

Holden pouts, quietly with his arms wrapped around his middle. He doesn’t respond for a long moment, but Bill knows his words are ringing true despite the stubborn insolence. 

“Will you come back to Belfast next year?” Holden asks, finally.

“Honestly … I don’t know.”

Holden’s gaze cuts back to Bill, widening with a watery glaze that could have been construed as tears in a human. In a faery-demon, Bill doesn’t know what it means. 

“If I say yes, every person I potentially meet would just be playing second fiddle to you.” Bill says, “I have to … I don’t know - get you out of my mind.”

“You wish you could forget about me now?”

Bill ignores the quiver of fear in his chest for honesty. “Yes.”

Holden rises sharply to his feet, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Well, you’re not going to.”

“You could make it happen if you wanted to. You could wipe my memories.”

“I don’t think so.” Holden hisses, leaning closer with a cruel smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, “You’re going to think about me every day for the rest of your life, Bill. You’re going to remember what it felt like when I touched you, and no other human intimacy will ever compare. In ten years, you’re going to be in bed with another man, and you’re going to want to moan my name instead of his. You’re going to stand by the water, and try to conjure me in your mind - but I won’t appear. And every year, when the veil between our worlds is so thin, you will know I’m somewhere else - with someone else - and it’s going to kill you.”

“Holden, wait-” Bill begins, reaching out for his wrist. 

Holden dematerializes before his very eyes. His hand closes around empty air, and he’s left with the scent of incense in his nostrils. 

“Fuck.” He says, loudly into the silence. 

The wind through the window responds with a lonely wail. Bill wonders what it sounds like to hear a  _ púca _ cry. 

  
  
  


Wendy broaches the topic only once. 

“Turns out it was just sex. It didn’t work out.” Bill reports, brusquely, and makes it known that he doesn’t feel like discussing it any further by turning to the pile of resumes on his desk that require reviewing. 

Being the good friend that she is, she addresses the three resumes at the top of the stack that she had deemed to be the most eligible hires for their unit. Along with the new and revised training curriculum altered for field consultations and not just interviews, there’s the necessity for Bill to have a partner on such assignments that have too much involvement for one person to handle. 

For the most part, he agrees with her deduction of the possible recruits. Some of them are greenhorns fresh out of school who are interested in psychology. A few have actual field experience. The people who want to join the BSU are always an intriguing bunch, a rash of thrill-seekers and ill-prepared newbies in between the folks who might actually bring something to the table. 

Bill wonders what it says about him that he and Wendy birthed the idea of conversing with serial killers and went on to make a career out of it. That he’d attracted a creature like Holden may not come as much of a surprise for someone who can empathize with sexual sadists who have tortured and murdered innocent people in every conceivable, cruel manner. 

And there he goes, thinking about Holden daily just as the creature had promised. 

Shaking the memory of red eyes from his mind, Bill picks up the telephone to dial the number of the BSU agent hopeful at the top of the stack. 

Roger Tatum’s resume is short and sweet, but packs a powerful punch. A brief stint in the Marines prior to his undergrad degree at Virginia Tech for criminal psychology, graduation from the FBI’s Academy, and direct submersion into investigative work via the Atlanta field office. A trajectory not quite different from Bill’s own history with the Bureau. 

The man answers on the second ring, “Hello?”

“Hi, I’m looking for Roger.”

“Oh, uh … yes, yes, that’s me.”

“My name is Bill Tench. I head the Behavior Science Unit over here at Quantico.”

“Oh, Mr. Tench. Thanks for the call. I’m sorry, it’s just that most people call me Tate. I don’t really go by Roger.”

“I see.” Bill says, “Well, Tate, Dr. Carr and I have looked over your resume, and you have our interest.” 

“That’s wonderful to hear.”

“Do you have some time to talk right now?” Bill asks, “I figure since you’re in Atlanta, a phone interview will do for right now, and I can let you know if we’d like you to come up for an in-person interview.”

“Absolutely. Hit me.” Tate says. 

Bill had a list of prepared questions, but they don’t get much further than Tate’s background in the military before the conversation veers from work-related to personal. Much to Bill’s surprise, Tate explains that he was at Fort Hood for basic training the same as Bill. It’s possible they could have crossed paths all that time ago, but their separate ways are just now meeting twenty years later. 

Tate is funny, a grandiose storyteller with a flair for the dramatic in between realistic scenarios of barracks and war, but also a clearly intelligent man whose successes in the Atlanta field office have sprung him to deputy SAC, on his way to the Hoover building. 

“So why do you want to come here?” Bill asks once they’ve exhausted conversation about military life. 

“Psychology is a bit of a no man’s land, isn’t it?” Tate remarks. 

“Yeah, it was kind of frowned upon up until a few years ago.”

“Exactly. But it informs everything, all that we do and say. It isn’t just about serial killers. It’s about our own impulses. They landed men on the moon, you know; it’s the last undiscovered country until we figure out warp speed.”

Bill laughs at the comparison before sobering. Tate has exactly the kind of thinking they’re looking for, and he’d hire him on the spot if he didn’t have to talk to Wendy first. They hang up after Bill promises to get back to him quickly. 

Leaning back in his chair to light a cigarette, Bill regards the telephone with a bemused smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. It’s the first time in awhile that anyone has genuinely made him laugh. 

And he hadn’t thought about Holden for nearly an hour. 

  
  
  


Wendy harbors no complaints about Bill’s intuition that they should hire Tate. Even so, they must stick to the formality of an in-person interview before offering him the job. 

He comes up from Atlanta on a Friday, three weeks after Bill’s return from Belfast. His face matches his friendly voice. Unlike Bill, he hadn’t stuck to the military flattop after discharge. His dark brown hair is parted to one side and combed back, and he sports a neatly trimmed mustache over the puckered bow of his upper lip. He’s quick to smile, a gesture that manages to reach his hazel-brown eyes every time. 

Bill tries to be objective with the interview, but Wendy ends up asking most of the professional, detailed questions. He quietly wonders where all of his staunch reserve that he once carried easily into interviews with serial killers went to. Then he wonders if he’s looking too hard for a face to replace Holden’s on lonely nights. 

The mental real estate Holden had carved out for himself in Bill’s mind echoes hollow and vacant, a ghost town of old memory and impulse that still echoes in his dreams. He keeps waiting through the weeks following Belfast for those crystal clear recollections to fade away, but they hang on, deliberate and intricate. He pushes back hard against them, tries to close the door behind him, always failing; and his only slight victories have come in occupying his mind with other distractions for every second that he’s alone. 

Maybe Tate is no different than the models in the magazines who are strangers to him, never able to come up off the page and reciprocate his fantasies. He seems heterosexual enough. More than likely, Bill’s gazes are entirely unrequited. 

His own logic, however, continues to evade him after Wendy agrees with the hire, and the Atlanta field office releases Tate to their unit. Since Tate is supposed to be joining Bill on consults in the future, they work together in the coming weeks within a proximity that makes his loneliness and Tate’s attractiveness difficult to ignore.

Within a few months of Tate’s arrival, he proves to be an asset to their work and not just Bill’s longing gaze. After a few promising exercises, Bill gives him the telephone consults that don’t require their on-the-ground assistance, and Tate flies through him. 

“He’s a natural.” Bill tells Wendy one day as they meet by coffee machine in the morning. 

“That’s good to hear. Good help is hard to find sometimes.” She says. 

“You’re not kidding. Remember that intern?”

“The one who spilled hot coffee in your lap?”

Bill grimaces a chuckle. “One and the same.” 

“Oh, I think he was just star-struck.” Wendy says, casting him a fond smile, “And a little intimidated.”

“Intimidated?”

“Yes, Bill. You’re intimidating sometimes.”

“Not to you, obviously.”

“Obviously. But I’ve seen how hard you are on the new hires. Why are you being so easy on Agent Tatum?”

“I’m not.” Bill replies, defensively. “He’s just a good fit.”

Wendy arches her eyebrow as she brings her coffee cup to her mouth. The rising steam does little to conceal her skepticism. 

“What?” Bill snaps, his face growing hot, “Every challenge I’ve given him, he’s excelled. And he hasn’t spilled hot coffee across my crotch so that’s worth at least a few brownie points.”

She laughs, and waves her hand. “Fine. If you say so.”

As she heads for her office, Tate enters the BSU office with his briefcase in one hand and the newspaper in the other. 

“Morning, Bill.”

“Morning.” Bill says, instinctively reaching for his cigarettes as the buzz of nerves arrives in his belly. 

“Did you hear?” Tate asks, his brow knit with an unusual frown. 

“Hear what?”

“They pulled another body out of the Green River. That makes ten confirmed dead and six others missing.”

“Jesus.” Bill says, studying the headline of the paper that Tate grimly hands over to him. 

“You think they’ll ask for our help?” 

“I’m sure it’s coming.” Bill says, “And when they do, it’s going to be a big case, big task force. I’m going to need help on the ground.”

“You think I’m ready for that?” Tate asks, though a smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth. 

“More than ready. I was just telling Wendy, you’re a natural at this.”

“Well, thanks, but we’ll see. You haven’t gotten to see me in action yet.”

“But I trained you, didn’t I?”

They share a quiet laugh. 

It’s the last levity that they’ll share for awhile. As Bill predicted, the Seattle Police Department reaches out to them not long after number twelve is exhumed from her cold water burial. In just a month’s time, they’re pulled into the mounting body count and an unavigatable heart of darkness. 


	5. Chapter 5

By the time Bill and Tate are called out to Seattle, the case of the Green River Killer has been dragging on for nearly a year, boasting an alarmingly high body count and no sign of the murders stopping. It’s also been six months since Bill left Belfast and Holden behind for a second time, but it feels much longer with the memories of their last encounter plaguing him relentlessly. 

When they arrive at their hotel in Seattle, Bill surveys the rented room that he’ll be calling home for the foreseeable future - hopefully no more than a few weeks - and can’t help but think of that god-awful wallpaper in Belfast. The wallpaper in this hotel is a bland, pale yellow with a white, lacy pattern striped over it. The window to the left of the bed provides a view of the city skyline, and not so far off, the Green River itself nestled in amongst the forestry that abounds in lavish green beyond the edge of civilization.

He and Tate head over to the task force headquarters that same day to dive feet first into the investigation. 

Unlike with some homicide cases, there’s no shortage of suspects; in fact, since the investigation began in July 1982, the detectives on the case have already interviewed more than fifty men. The problem with the Green River Killer isn’t finding evidence or even suspicious men; it’s the type of women who are being slaughtered. Prostitutes, runaways, junkies - the scum of the earth in some people’s opinions - some of whom were never missed by anyone. It wasn’t until the case began getting national attention after death number five that the folks in charge of the investigation began looking to the FBI for help, first contacting the local field office for assistance. 

Calling in the BSU feels like a last-ditch effort. The mood in the task force headquarters is one of resigned exhaustion, each member plodding forward with scarce belief that there’s an end in sight. The lukewarm response that they receive from most of the detectives on the case doesn’t go unnoticed by either Bill or Tate. As the man in charge of the case rattles off their current status and asks how they’re going to help, Bill’s own self-confidence flags. With the consult being passed like a hot potato onto their unit now that twelve are dead and seven missing, he feels like he’s stepping into the ring with his hands tied behind his back.

He doesn’t mention his pessimism to the task force leaders nor to Tate who is looking at him for direction, and instead suggests that they go back through all of the material from the twelve homicides and every last suspect and alibi. He’d written a preliminary profile based on what information they already have so they can try to narrow the list, but he’d like to get a better sense of everything laid out in front of him. 

That evening, he has a uniformed officer help him haul twelve cardboard boxes back to his hotel room. 

After he papier-mâchés the wall opposite the bed with photographs of the victims, evidence, and crime scenes, he drags the chair from under the desk to the front of the display, and sits down with a cigarette, a glass of whiskey, and a notebook. 

The murders are brutal and cold. Each woman was strangled before being cast into the river. Some bodies were weighed down in an apparent attempt to conceal them further, but nothing can hide the contempt this killer holds for women. 

The type of man who would kill indiscriminately this way won't have much nuance, Bill thinks. Perhaps that's the problem, why he's having so much trouble parsing an image of the killer from the shadows. He's a blunt instrument, a dull man with no master plan or advanced intelligence, simply an angry person who has been rejected and undervalued his whole life taking out his hatred on the most convenient targets. 

_ Each murder and murderer is specific in their own way. There must be some detail he's missed.  _ The thought trudges across his brain, addled by sleep deprivation, stress, and jet lag, even as his fingers reach subconsciously into his pocket. 

Tucked amongst loose change and his lighter is a small, smooth stone the size of a half dollar. His thumb traces the familiar groove and dip on one side which has been worn dull over the course of the last six months. 

_ Focus … _ He thinks, but that thought, too, gets lost in the cacophony of his mind, crammed somewhere in between his own shortcomings and the expectations now placed on his shoulders. 

Pulling the stone from his pocket, Bill holds it up to the light. He takes a slow drag of his cigarette, and exhales an unsteady breath. The red crystal catches the jaundiced yellow lamplight, shimmering stark crimson against the drab backdrop of Seattle, an unenchanted, rainy place so far from Belfast. He’s smelling the river again, but it doesn't smell like the Lagan. It smells like dead fish, dead bodies. No red eyes in the night to snatch him from the huddled seat of his worries. 

A quiet knock at the door startles him back to reality. 

Shoving the jasper back in his pocket, Bill shuffles across the room, and presses his eye to the peephole. Tate is standing in the hallway. 

Bill draws in a deep breath, and arranges his face into an expression of reserved cool before pulling the door open. 

“Hey,” He says. 

“Hey.” Tate offers a grim smile, “I thought we could brainstorm together.”

“Sure, come in.” Bill agrees, standing aside and gesturing Tate in. 

Tate walks past him, leaving the smell of cologne in his wake. He crosses his arms as he stops in front of the wall of photographs, a frown knitting his brow. 

“I thought people only did this in movies.” He says. 

Bill grunts a laugh. “Nope. It’s really helpful to see everything spread out all at once.”

“Big picture?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“See anything new yet so far?”

Bill sighs, and shakes his head grimly. He joins Tate in front of the wall, and studies each dead woman’s face. “Just hate.”

“Well, that’s one thing we can agree on. This guy hates women.”

“That’s not exactly ground-breaking. Most men who kill women do it for that very reason.”

“It’s not very sophisticated. I can’t believe we’ve got twelve bodies and no good leads.”

“These are high-risk victims, living high-risk lives. Most of them weren’t even reported missing.” Bill says, “It’s simple, but it is smart.”

“I’m still confident we can nail him. There has to be something here they’ve missed or some new tactic we can give them to try.”

“Well,” Bill grunts, “I’m glad you’re optimistic.”

“You’re not?”

“This case is past its prime.”

“Prime? What does that mean?”

“It means this guy is past the point of being afraid he’ll be caught. He’s killed twelve women for sure, likely more. He’s settled down, calmed down, perfected his craft. He knows exactly what he’s doing now. He isn’t nervous.”

“How could you kill twelve women and not be nervous?”

“Look at this,” Bill says, tapping a finger over the picture of a victim who had been found with a pair of men’s socks tied around her neck. “That isn’t nervous. It’s experimentation. Different implements. He left a piece of evidence behind; granted it had been in the water too long to be useful, but it didn’t worry him one bit. He thinks he’s God at this point - or the Devil.”

Tate is quiet for a long moment, and Bill shifts his gaze from the photographs to absorb the paralyzed trepidation on his face. 

“What?” He asks. 

“This case … we’re going to be here for awhile, aren’t we?” Tate asks, quietly.

“Could be.”

“Wendy told me about Atlanta, how you were down there for over a month.”

“Yeah. Except we caught that guy.”

“So it was worth it, wasn’t it?”

“Worth it.” Bill echoes, scoffing a laugh. “Yeah, if you’re the type of FBI agent who gets off on accolades and convictions.”

“If not?”

“If not …” Bill says, taking a slow drag of his cigarette, “Then you make sacrifices for this job, and hope it all adds up to something in the end.”

“Sacrifices?”

“Yep,” Bill says, bolstering his tone to one of brisk nonchalance, “My wife left me while I was in Atlanta. Took my son with her, served me the papers as soon as I got back. But no more kids died in Atlanta after we busted Williams, so I’d guess you would call it a success.”

“Shit, Bill, I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine. It was two and half years ago, and it was probably for the best. I’m just saying, manage your expectations of how this is going to end. There’s been plenty of times in this job where I went out, gave a consult, and they didn’t catch the guy. The biggest case I ever worked was the final nail in the coffin of my marriage. You win some, you lose some. In this job, sometimes you lose a lot more than you bargained for.”

Tate studies him with a small frown, and his thumb stroking the corner of his mustache. Bill can see the thoughts turning behind his eyes, taking this personal information and dissecting it. He suddenly wonders if he said too much. 

“So, uh …” Bill says, clearing his throat, “I hope you’re committed to the BSU, and you don’t have as much on the line as I did.”

Tate shakes his head. “No, this is it.”

“No girlfriend back home, sitting by the phone, waiting for your call?”

“Nope.”

“Good. It’s easier that way.”

“What about you? Not over your ex?”

“Oh, trust me. I’m over her. It just gets … lonely sometimes.”

Tate puts his hand on Bill’s arm - not the way two ex-military colleagues clap the other brusquely on the back or squeeze the shoulder firmly, but gently, almost hesitantly as if he’s not certain Bill would accept it. 

“Well, I’m in this with you,” Tate murmurs, a faint smile tugging hopefully at the corner of his mouth. 

Bill only nods as he can’t speak with his repressed desires crowding at the back of his throat. He wants to shout at Tate to stop looking at him like that, stop touching him, stop tempting him -  _ stop, stop, stop.  _ But he can’t make a sound. 

Tate shifts closer. “I mean it. I know I’m still new at this, but you’re my partner. Anything that you need, I’m here to help you.”

Bill finds himself turning fully to face Tate, drowning himself in warm hazel eyes.

"Tell me again we'll catch this guy," He whispers, his voice a barely audible rasp. "I need one of us to believe it …" 

He doesn't finish. What he wanted to say was  _ "I need someone to believe in me."  _ But maybe Tate heard it all the same because he leans closer - so close that their chests nearly brush, and Bill watches powerlessly as his own hand rises to grasp Tate’s cheek. 

Tate’s throat bobs as he swallows hard. A blush blooms beneath Bill's touch, but he doesn’t pull away. 

"We'll catch him," He says, hoarsely.

Bill can feel the thud of his pulse in his entire body, and a prickling heat dispersing from his belly that outweighs the red flags springing up glaringly in his mind. He closes his eyes, and leans forward. 

Their mouths collide in uncoordinated hesitance, no more than three seconds of Bill's trembling caress riding over Tate’s unprepared lower lip with little romantic finesse. He tastes sweet, and his mouth is so soft; but Bill has meager comparison considering it’s been awhile since he kissed anyone - anyone human that is. 

As soon as it happens, he knows he's made a mistake. He feels Tate stiffen in his grasp, and the staggered burst of his startled breath. A pair of hands push at his chest, breaking them apart. 

Heat floods Bill’s cheeks as he takes an unsteady step back. 

“Fuck, I’m sorry-” He begins, almost choking on the apology as he meets Tate’s wide-eyed, alarmed stare. 

Tate says nothing for a long moment, and Bill’s mind begins to race. Consequences. The truth. The future. What is Tate going to do with this knowledge about him? God, what did he do?

“I-I was drinking …” He begins again, weakly, motioning to the remnants of whiskey in his glass, “I don’t know what I was thinking. That was- … I’m not- ...I don’t even-”

“Bill, it’s okay.” Tate says, sounding strangely calm. 

“It is?”

“Yes, but I- …” Tate says, rubbing a hand over his mouth and jaw. “I don’t sleep with my co-workers.”

Bill stares at him, blankly for as long as it takes for the implication to sink in, the unsaid words ringing clearly between them:  _ Yes, I sleep with men; no, I don’t sleep with my co-workers.  _

Tate clears his throat. “I should go.”

“Right, uh, yeah,” Bill mutters, letting his gaze fall to the floor so that he doesn’t have to suffer the humiliation of watching Tate walk past him. As the door eases open, he blurts, “Tate.”

“Yeah?” Tate asks, pausing to meet Bill’s hesitant gaze. 

“I don’t either. It’s not professional at all. I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.”

Tate nods like he understands. There’s no anger or disgust on his face, but a glimmer of disappointment in his eyes that Bill might have imagined. He slips out of the room, and the door falls shut on his heels with a thud. 

Bill sinks down to the chair with a groan. Cradling his face in his hands, he tries in vain to smother the cramping embarrassment in the pit of his stomach. A tirade of berating questions cross his mind:  _ What the hell is wrong with you? What were you thinking? Are you trying to fuck up your entire life? Are you that fucking desperate?  _

He doesn’t have an answer for any of them, at least none that he likes. 

Leaving the photos of the dead victims behind on the wall, he puts on his shoes and grabs the keys of his rental car. When he pulls out of the darkness of the parking garage and into the dying light outlining the city skyline in bands of gold, he only has one destination in mind. 

Puffing nervously on a cigarette, he navigates the congested traffic surrounding the several square blocks of downtown. The nightlife of Seattle is in full swing with pedestrians milling along the sidewalks and lines forming into the alleys of nightclubs and bars. Every single person is immune to the darkness hovering over the city, orchestrated by a face in the shadows; and they’re immune to the supernatural forces at work outside their purview, faeries and demons and monsters all nipping at the fringes of earth for dominance. He alone drives straight toward their arms. 

As he emerges from the city center, the streets drop down to one lane that winds past rows of cookie cutter homes and picket fences for a minute just before the neighborhood goes rural, populated by hemlock, pines, and firs. The single strip of asphalt points toward wilderness, an uncertain future. 

He turns on the radio to drown out his thoughts, trying to ignore what he’s about to do even as he takes an active part in facilitating it. Judy Collins croons “Both Sides Now” from in between bits of static and radio interference.  _ It's life’s illusions I recall; I really don’t know life at all … _

It all seems illusion enough as an array of pink and purple sunset backlit by dazzling gold oversaturates the towering forestry and permeates mist. Up ahead, a deserted parking lot emerges from the right side of the tree-canopied bend, the only sign of civilization for several miles. A few picnic tables sit at the edge of the lot that’s empty except for his rental, and an arrow pointed toward the dirt path reads:  _ Green River Trail.  _

He hesitates for only a moment before he gets out of the car, crushes the remnants of his cigarette underheel, and heads down the damp, shadowy path.

As he walks at a fast clip, the forest hums with life and furtive movement around him. Wind winds softly through the outstretched, fulsome branches, creating a sigh like that of a distant, god-like voice bending over the groaning foliage. All the denizens of the wood scurry and hop across undergrowth, but the chirp of crickets and the buzz of cicadas take precedence over every other sound.

Bill’s ears strain until they pick up the distant sound of the rushing river emerging above the harmony of the forest. He picks up his pace, ignoring the layer of sweat beginning to cling beneath his polo shirt. 

After a ten minute walk, the Green River comes into view. A steel bridge stretches over the water, connecting the two sides of the trail. The arches on either side are connected by rusty, green beams that meet at triangular points along the length, and a waist-high railing keeps passerbys from plunging to the cold, surging water below. 

Walking up to the left railing, Bill leans forward to stare down at the relentless flow of the river where so many women had met their deaths. A cool breeze rises up from the water, bringing with it the muddy scent and an uncanny energy. 

He presses his eyes shut as Holden’s voice haunts his mind:  _ You’re going to stand by the water, and try to conjure me in your mind - but I won’t appear.  _ Then he opens them again, leaning back from the railing to scan the undulating path of the river stretching out before him and the surrounding forest going on as far as his eyes can see. 

The prediction had been weighed and rejected and wearily accepted in his mind for so long, yet he’d driven here with every intention of proving it wrong. The effort seems futile and foolish now that he’s standing on a bridge in the middle of nowhere asking for answers from the sky.

Slipping his hand into his pocket and feeling the cool edge of red jasper, he realizes he  _ has  _ thought of Holden every day while the maddening creature is probably somewhere in the Underworld moving beyond him out of spite, finding some other fancy to pass his time. Bill is left behind with his longing for that feeling of completion and relief, not just sexually but spiritually - the way Holden saw all his flaws and wanted him in spite of them. It seems like nothing will ever compare, and he’ll be alone forever. 

_ And what of Holden? _ He has to convince himself that it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters more than his own sanity. 

Opening his eyes, Bill yanks the red jasper stone from his pocket, and cocks his arm back to throw it into the water. 

“That isn’t going to make you forget about me _. _ ”

Bill whirls around with a gasp lodging in the back of his throat. 

Holden is sitting on the opposite railing with the unraveling sunset framing him in rays of resplendent yellow and melting pink. He’s dressed casually in jeans and a plain, red t-shirt. His feet are bare, dangling pale and clean above the dirty cement sidewalk of the bridge. 

“What- … What are you doing here?” Bill breathes out. 

“A better question is, what are  _ you  _ doing here?”

“No, I asked you first. You said you weren’t going to show up for me anymore, but here you are.”

Holden sighs. His eyes dart away for a moment before he arranges his expression into blasé aplomb. 

“It’s difficult not to when you’re so … open to it.”

“Open.” Bill echoes, derisively. “Really? I came out here to try and put all that behind me.”

“Did you?” Holden asks, his brow rising skeptically. 

Bill clenches his jaw, and lets his shame segue into anger. “No, but I have to. That’s life.  _ Human  _ life, Holden. Shit happens, and you move on. It’s hell every day up until it isn’t. You learn that when you go through a divorce - something you would have no idea about.”

“Wow,” Holden mutters. 

“Wow what?”

“I’m just another thing that happened to you? In the same category as your divorce?”

Bill squeezes his fist around the jasper. He wants to hurl it at Holden’s face for all the good it would do, and scream,  _ Take it back. Please, God, take back what you’ve done to me.  _ But he already knows no amount of praying can reserve the effect Holden has on him, and a part of him wouldn’t want it to. 

“Yeah,” He says, finally. “Maybe worse.”

Holden’s red eyes spark, and his spine stiffens defensively. 

Bill crosses the two vacant lanes of the bridge, and steps up onto the sidewalk at Holden’s feet. He hesitantly puts his hand on Holden’s knee, and when Holden doesn’t resist, he moves it further up his thigh. 

“I never had with Nancy what I felt with you,” He admits, quietly. 

The anger on Holden’s face sloughs away into concealed agony. His eyes are glassy like the stone clutched in Bill’s fist as he looks away. A gentle breeze toys with the curls on his forehead, assuring Bill that this moment is real. 

“Then what are you really doing here?”

“Trying to live my life. Do my job. I can’t think straight with you … with you taking up so much space in my mind.”

Holden’s smile is wilted, not at all the self-assured smirk of encounters past. “I like it when you can’t think straight.”

Bill scoffs, feeling his cheeks go warm. “Well, it’s not an advantage for me when I’m trying to work. People’s lives depend on me.”

“Do you want some help?”

“What? With the case?”

“Yes. I have a sense of how it will end.”

“You do?”

“It isn’t good.” Holden says, lowering his head. He draws in a shaky breath. “Knowing your mind has exposed me to some dark things about you humans that I never knew before. Imagine, me living for so many of your earthly decades, infatuated with your people, and never realizing ….”

“What do you mean? Not good?” Bill presses, trying to catch Holden’s downturned gaze. “Holden, tell me.”

Holden lifts his chin. “I can’t give you anything helpful. I can’t predict the future in whole, Bill. I can only prophecy possible outcomes. I don’t want you to lose hope, but I don’t want you to believe in a scenario that will never happen no matter what you do.”

“Are you saying that we won’t catch him?”

“I’m saying I won’t lie to you … like other people.” Holden says, enunciating ‘ _ other’  _ with specific distaste. 

Bill’s stomach aches as he sees the glimmer of envy in his red eyes. “You’re reading my mind again, aren’t you?”

Holden purses his lips as if giving an effort in restraining himself before allowing in a brisk, resentful tone, “You kissed someone else. Some guy who doesn’t even want you.”

“I wouldn’t call it a kiss.”

“Whatever it was, it makes me sick.”

Bill retrieves his hand, and clenches his jaw against a hasty retort. Despite his longing, Holden’s petulant tone stirs the conflicted frustration in his chest to a steady boil. 

“No matter what you want to think, I don’t belong to you.” He says, sharply, “I don’t belong to anyone, all right? I’m making my own decisions - consciously now; and yeah, I might not always have the best judgement, but they’re my choices to make.”

Holden hops down from the railing so quickly that their chests nearly collide. 

Bill’s heel rocks on the edge of the curb, but he doesn’t stumble as Holden grabs onto his wrists. 

“Then forget him. And forget the case. We don’t have a lot of time,” Holden whispers, echoing his sentiment from that Miami beach a year ago, “Please, let’s go somewhere. I’ve missed you,  _ a rúnsearc _ . I ache to be with you, to touch you-”

“What are you talking about?” Bill asks, twisting his arms free of Holden’s grasp, “Not much time? I thought you were here because I wanted to see you.”

“I am.”

“But?”

“But nothing. Please, Bill-”

“No. What did you do?” 

Holden gazes up at him with a stubborn frown and stiff lower lip, refusing to answer. 

“You’re not supposed to be here, are you?” Bill asks, the words leaving his mouth breathlessly as realization mounts, “Just like you weren’t supposed to use your black magic on me … Just like you weren’t supposed to spend the night-”

“I make my own choices, too. And I want to be here with you tonight.”

Bill steps off the curb, and shuffles backwards uneasily, his head spinning and his stomach flipping. He’s seen the power wielded by the Underworld. He knows the kind of danger he’d put himself in just by interacting with Holden. What would happen to him if the enraged deities of that dimension came down upon him for leading one of their own astray?

“Don’t leave,” Holden whispers, holding out a trembling hand. 

“This is insane,” Bill says, rubbing a hand over his forehead and through his hair. “We can’t  _ be  _ together, Holden. No matter how much we may want it, we just can’t. It’s not possible. You have to accept that.”

“ _ No! _ ” Holden shouts. 

The word splits the air like a crack of lightning, echoing and shattering the quiet pall over the forest, momentarily drowning out the surge of the river. His hands ball into fists at his sides and his bare foot stamps the pavement, the pose of a child being denied dessert. 

Bill’s ears are left ringing. He’d dropped the red jasper in the exchange, and it lies at Holden’s feet like a small pool of blood draining from beneath his shuddering heart. Tears - real, human tears - gush from the corners of his eyes, and his lower lip quivers. 

“No,” He repeats, his voice trembling just before he draws in a deep breath and wipes the tears from his cheeks. “I’ll find a way, Bill. I won’t let you go.”

Bill can’t speak, too stunned into silence by the violent inertia of Holden’s emotions. He watches wordlessly, helplessly as Holden disappears, leaving no sign that he’d ever been there. He stares at the empty spot for several moments after while his brain contends between fantasy and reality. 

When he manages to gather himself, the color has gone from the sky along with the jealous, energetic hum of Holden’s presence. It’s almost dark as he makes his way back down the narrow forest path to his car, and he hastens his steps as the scratches and scurries from within the trees put his raw nerves on high alert. 

It isn’t until he’s back on the road toward his hotel that he realizes the weight of the red jasper in his pocket that he’d grown accustomed to for the six months is missing. He’d left it behind on the bridge, positioned on the cusp between his two worlds. 

  
  
  


“Goddamnit! Interception.” Tate curses, glaring up at the television mounted above the bar. 

It’s a week after their arrival here, and Bill had been politely avoiding Tate outside of working hours since the botched kiss; but Tate had surprised him by suggesting they hit the bar for a couple beers before retiring to the hotel tonight. 

Bill studies him from the corner of his eye, pretending to be as engrossed in the matchup between the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys as his partner is. The truth is, he’d lost his appetite for football many years ago, not long after he wrecked his shoulder and ended his hopes for a scholarship or even a career. The Army was better training for his future, anyway; a battleground to harden him, and the faces of young men he had hooked up with once never to see them again reminding him that some things aren’t meant to last. 

He should have stuck to that frame of mind, he thinks. Just like Tate. 

“Flag! Where’s the fucking flag?” Tate interrupts Bill’s thoughts as he smacks his hand on the bar in frustration. 

Bill takes a swig of his beer. 

“These refs, I swear to God.” Tate mutters, shaking his head. He seems to catch Bill’s disinterest, and sobers as he turns to him. “You struck me as a football guy, Bill. Did I get that wrong?”

“No, I played in high school.”

“College?”

“Nope.” Bill says, curtly, not interested in rehashing the events of just how his sports career ended.

Tate nods, slowly, pursing his lips. He doesn’t do a very good job of hiding the fact that he’s dissecting Bill’s expression and posture. 

Bill can feel the questions incoming, but he doesn’t want to disrespect Tate more than he already has; instead, he braces for it with his spine, and sucks in his belly against a nauseated clench. 

“I’m sorry. I was trying to break the ice with this.” Tate says, scoffing a nervous laugh. “I guess I was wrong.”

Bill sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “No … you weren’t. It’s my fault-”

“I just don’t want things to be weird,” Tate says, rushed. “We have a great working relationship, and I don’t want to ruin that. I don’t want you thinking I’m an asshole, or-”

“What? No. If anything,  _ I’m  _ the asshole.”

Tate’s frown fades with a quiet scoff. “I don’t think you’re an asshole.” 

“You don’t? I’m the one who tried to- you know …” Bill trails off, blushing. 

“And I should have taken a step back sooner. I didn’t think that … Well, you didn’t strike me as someone who- … who is like me.” 

They share a quiet gaze, and Bill almost wants to laugh at the absurdity of this conversation. All this time, Tate had been viewing him as a heterosexual guy, more of a mentor and friend rather than a possible hook-up; meanwhile, Bill had been looking for something more, and thinking he’d had a Eureka moment in the hotel room when Tate had truly been offering friendship and nothing more. 

“Yeah, well, I’m still trying to …” Bill mutters, nervously scratching the back of his neck, and focusing more intently on the football game than before. “... figure it out.”

Tate nods, compassionately. “It’s hard. I can tell that you’re lonely. I know I didn’t get that part wrong because that kind of feeling doesn’t discriminate between people who are heterosexual and people who are …” He glances around the bar, brimming with men who wouldn’t appreciate their conversation and ends with a flat, “-aren’t.”

Bill tries to dislodge the knot in the back of his throat with a sip of beer, but he still can’t speak as Tate leans closer. 

“I know exactly how you feel.” He says.

Bill highly doubts that, but he hesitantly meets Tate’s gaze. “And? What do you do about it?”

“Well, I tried to sleep with women for a long time to convince myself, but I felt awful, not just for myself but for them because I could never give them everything they wanted. That’s when I got into the, um … what should I call it? Date services?”

Bill studies Tate’s nonchalant expression, feeling his blood starting to boil. “Prostitutes, you mean.”

“No, no, no. It’s a nice gig. Classy service. Very discreet - which is important in our line of work.” Tate says, hastily. “And all of their boys are clean. No drugs or AIDS.”

Bill shakes his head, and looks away. 

“What?” Tate asks, curiously. “It’s exactly what you need, I’m telling you. These boys they have are something else. I can give you the tips on who to ask for.” He cups a hand over his mouth to conceal his next suggestion from the rest of the bar, “When one of these young, toned whores is riding your cock, it’s like nothing you’ll ever experience-”

Shoving his beer away, Bill rises from the stool, and yanks his jacket from the back. The angry burn in his chest is so intense that he thinks it might rip free of his bones and spill out onto the floor between them, lava-hot viscera. 

“What? What’s wrong?” Tate demands, his expression stiff with shock. 

“You don’t know shit about how I feel.” Bill snaps, jabbing a shaking finger at him. “You think I haven’t been exactly where you are? Depending on some stranger to get me through? Settling for fucking table scraps?”

Tate glances nervously around the bar before replying past clenched teeth, “It’s all men like us can hope for, Bill.”

“No. You’re wrong.” Bill says. He cuts a glare at the TV. The Cowboys have just gone up another touchdown. “And those refs know what the hell they’re doing. There was no fucking flag. The Redskins are just playing shitty fucking defense.”

Tate’s mouth slips open in a wounded grimace. He doesn’t try to call after Bill or chase him down as Bill storms past the sideways glances from other patrons, the crowded groups flocking to the bar for another anesthetizing drink, and the strobe of blue lights illuminating the swaying drunkards pretending to dance. He keeps moving even as he hits the cool night air, and his stinging throat and eyes are relieved of the cigarette smoke fogging the cramped bar. Tate drove them here so he walks, and doesn’t stop until he gets to the hotel. 

After he takes a long shower to erase the sweat and grime of a long day, but moreover Tate’s salacious suggestions which he had once wholly subscribed to himself, he lays down in bed with the lights off. In the darkness, he tries to press his eyes shut, but he only sees Holden sitting on the railing of the bridge with his strange heart laid open. 

Bill can’t sleep, and he wishes that he hadn’t left the red jasper behind; it was his only physical tether to Holden, a tangible reminder of what they shared. It seems so close, perhaps within reach if he strained his fingers out a bit further, but he knows he’s being preposterous. Despite Holden’s stubborn claims, there’s no version of reality in which they can be together. 

  
  
  


In the end, Bill and Tate spend a total of four weeks in Seattle. In that space of time, five more bodies are dragged from the Green River, some of which had been in the water since before their arrival, some which are fresher and offer more insight into the rudimentary way he kills. 

None if it helps solve the case, an extensive investigation weighed down in bodies, paperwork, alibis, interviews, and jurisdictions. It’s turning into a needle in a haystack situation that blurs to an indistinguishable mass of death the longer Bill looks at it. 

The profile is about as specific as he can be. The tool helps narrow down the multiplying suspects in boyfriends, johns, and pimps, but with any forensic evidence washed away in the water, they have very little to go on as far as concrete leads. They try a few more tactics with town halls, appeals from victims’ families, and strategic press conferences. While the false confessions flood in, the real killer remains silent and elusive, unimpressed by their efforts, unswayed by the thought of enduring fame that contacting the media might offer him. 

One of the victims turned out to be eight months pregnant, and at that point, Bill knew. 

This man would not contact the media. He would not look at the faces of that girl’s parents, and feel sorry for his actions. He would not regret a single thing he’s done. And he would not stop. 

When he and Tate are summoned back to Quantico, his heart weighs heavy with the thought that this hellish nightmare stalking the Sea-Tac Strip might never come to an end. He knows it in his bones, not just because he’s a seasoned investigator, but because Holden had said it. 

And like Holden, the Green River Killer is a puzzle that will remain unsolved. 

  
  
  


On the plane back to Quantico, Bill and Tate sit quietly next to one another for the duration of the flight. 

With the investigation wearing him thin, Bill hadn’t paid much attention to the pins-and-needles prickling between him and Tate since that night at the bar. They’ve been professional and amicable, but any kind of personal conversation is strictly lacking. Though only four weeks have passed, Bill thinks he’s going back to Quantico deeply changed. Perhaps both of them are. 

After they arrive in Dulles and pick up their luggage, they head outside where yellow cabs are swarming at the sidewalk to pick up travel-weary customers. They stand side-by-side, waiting for the initial rush of their flight to die down so they can each catch a separate taxi. 

Bill sets his bag down to pull his cigarettes out of his pocket and light up. 

“Bill …” Tate says, quietly, scuffing the toe of his boot into the cement sidewalk. 

“Hmm?” Bill grunts around his cigarette. He claps his lighter shut, and shoves it into his pocket, noticing the absence of the jasper the way he always does. 

“Do you want me to stay with this unit?” 

“What? Yeah, of course. You did great work.”

“I feel like we didn’t do anything.”

Bill tilts his head back to exhale smoke. “I told you to manage your expectations. Sometimes all we can do is our best.”

Tate nods, still staring at the ground. “Well, I’m ….” He trails off for a moment before carefully squinting up at Bill. “I think I'm realizing why you got so pissed off at me that night.”

“Why’s that?”

“This job is hard. I mean, it was hard when I was down in Atlanta, but it was a nine-to-five gig. I didn’t have to travel more than once every few months. I could go home at night, have a life. This isn’t …  _ that _ .”

“No, it isn’t.”

“If you’re sacrificing your life and your sanity for this job …. Well, you deserve to have someone who actually cares about you.”

Bill looks away as the words leave Tate’s mouth. The sentiment is puerile and genuine, an ideal that he never would have strove for consciously because it’s not necessarily realistic. It’s just a nice thought, like the end of a dream. 

“Do you still want to be in this unit?” Bill asks. 

Tate draws in a deep breath, and lifts his chin. “Yes.”

“Good. Seattle was a trial by fire. If you still want to be here after all that, then you’re going to be fine.” 

“You think so?”

“Yep.” Bill says, bending to retrieve his bag as a taxi pulls in front of them. He pats Tate on the shoulder, and offers a smile. “You’re a good profiler, Tate. See you Monday.”

Tate smiles faintly as if surprised by the gesture. 

Bill throws his luggage into the trunk of the taxi, and climbs inside. Passing the money over the backseat, he asks the driver to take him home. 

The taxi pulls away. The sight of Fredericksburg in the distance has never been such a relief. 

  
  
  


Bill finds the remaining red jasper stones still stored in their silk bag in his sock drawer when he gets home. He takes them out, and rubs each one with his thumb. It isn’t the same. None of them had been enchanted by Holden’s touch the way the original crystal had. None of them hold the palpable connection to the past, only the memory of another earthly fixture no different than the lamp or chair in that Belfast hotel room that populated his experiences. 

Even so, he tucks one in his pocket next to his lighter, and feels like he has balance again. 

It stays there all summer as he tries to distract his mind from that conversation on the bridge when Holden had promised to find him again. Nancy had put Brian into Little League so he has somewhere to be on the weekends when the kids are playing baseball at the field. If he’s free on weeknights, he offers to take Brian to practice; as a result, he sees Nancy more than he had in the past few years, a strange concurrence with her moving in with her boyfriend, Steve. 

Bill doesn’t find himself jealous that his ex-wife has moved on, only jealous that she seems to have found someone who makes her happy. They have him over for dinner a few times, and he tries not to watch them laugh and kiss too closely, afraid both of them will read his gaze as aggressive or negative. In truth, he’s just trying to convince himself that finding a love like that is possible even as the vague construct seems to slip further from his grasp with every week that passes. He can’t help the frustrated resignation that digs it’s nails into his mind:  _ It is possible. For people who aren’t attracted to the same sex.  _

One weekend, Steve is out of town for work, leaving Bill and Nancy alone in the stands of Brian’s baseball game. At this age, most of the spectators are parents and grandparents who don’t exactly sell out every seat in the bleachers. They’re sequestered from the other groups by a few rows, just enough privacy for Nancy to feel comfortable with asking personal questions. 

“Hey, whatever happened with that lady in Belfast?” She asks, her tone nonchalant as she gazes out at the Little League field from behind tortoise shell sunglasses. 

“Nothing.” 

“Nothing?” She echoes, a frown forming on her brow as she looks away from the boy winding up his pitch. 

“Yeah, I went back, but it didn’t work out.”

Her mouth pinches thoughtfully to one side, but she doesn’t press the topic. 

Brian is up next to the plate. 

She stands up to cheer for him, and he makes it over to first base. Whirling around to find her in the stands, he waves both arms and shouts, “Mom, I did it!”

“Go, Brian!” She yells, waving back at him. 

Bill waves, too. He wishes he could think about baseball, but his mind is a thousand miles away. 

Nancy sits back down as the game progresses. He can feel her watching him. 

“Are you okay?” She asks, softly. 

“Yeah, of course.”

“No. I mean really.”

Bill frowns, and leans forward to brace his elbows against his knees. The summer sun is high in the sky, beating down on his brow with baking heat. He wants to leave. 

“I’m glad you’re happy, Nance.” He says, at length. 

She takes off her sunglasses to peer at him more closely. “But you’re not?”

Bill sighs, and rubs the sheen of sweat from his brow. “I’d really rather not talk about it.”

“Well, you should talk to  _ someone  _ about it.”

“I’m fine.”

“Right there is your problem. You can never admit when you’re  _ not  _ fine. I wish I could remember the last time I saw you smile, Bill. I really do. I’m done being mad with you, and you know it. We put all that in the past. I want you to be happy.”

He smiles, sadly. “Thanks, Nance. For what it’s worth, I did try to take your advice - not waiting for the answers to fall from the sky, you know. But sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you’re just spinning your wheels.”

“I know what you mean,” She says, putting a hand on his arm. “Just don’t give up, okay? You deserve good things.”

The next day, Bill drives out to the Rappahannock River which runs northwest of Fredericksburg. He tells himself that he’s going to try to have a relaxing Sunday and do a little fishing; but while he sits by the water with the line stretching like a seeking spider’s web across the sparkling river, he does nothing but think of Holden. 

_I’ve never been more open than I am right now,_ He thinks, glaring out at the clear, blue sky and the cheerfully singing water. _Show yourself._ _I’m at your mercy …_

It would probably please Holden to hear him say it. 

As it is, his supplication avails him nothing. When he packs up his tackle box to go home, he’s as alone as he’s ever been. 

  
  
  


Bill had never subscribed to the idea of celebrating Halloween - or any other holiday for that matter - as zealously as many people do, but when Wendy invites him over for the little shin-dig she’s having with friends, he doesn’t reject the chance at socializing far beyond the borders of his lonely apartment. 

It’s not really a costume party. Wendy answers the door in a turtleneck, slacks, and a headband with kitten ears on it. 

“I’m so glad you could make it,” She says, transferring her glass of champagne to her left hand so she can pull him into a brief hug. “Come in.”

Bill follows her into the house, making a quick perusal of his surroundings. He’s been over for dinner before, but the atmosphere is quite different with all of the people slouched on couches and chairs, the dramatic tone of Halloween music playing from the stereo, and the smell of festive candles dispersing cinnamon and maple scents into the air. 

Wendy’s friend group isn’t the professional, academic faction he’d expected. A lot of the ladies are in jeans and denim, sleek slacks and button-downs, or short dresses. There’s a lot of ladies in general; he feels strange as the only man in the room. 

“Come with me, I’ll get you a drink.” Wendy says, waving him past the table where a woman with short, blond hair is painting a butterfly on another woman’s cheek. 

They go into the kitchen where it’s quieter. Numerous drinking options are sitting out on the island. 

“What would you like?”

“Whiskey is good.”

“How about a little Coke in it?” 

“Sure.”

Wendy pours a generous mix of Jack Daniel’s into Coca-Cola, and stirs it with a straw while she watches him from the corner of her eye. 

“How have you been?” She asks, extending the drink to him.

“Fine. Thanks.”

“That’s it? Fine?”

“Yeah.” Bill says, offering a hapless smile. “And you?”

“Really good actually. I’m just asking because I know we’ve been extremely busy this year, and we don’t get to talk as much as we used to.”

Bill takes a sip of his drink, and winces. She put a lot of whiskey in it, just how he prefers it. 

“If I’m being honest, sometimes I miss those days.” She says, leaning back against the island with a sad smile. 

“The basement days?”

“Yes.”

Bill scoffs a laugh. “At least now we get to see sunlight.”

“Sunlight in exchange for the days of our lives devoured by this job. Hardly seems fair.”

“You regretting how successful we’ve been?”

“No, but I miss you.” She says, putting a hand on his arm. “I remember those first few weeks and months. We were both on fire with the idea. We had no idea if it would work, or if it would go anywhere - but we were happy doing what we thought meant something significant.”

“It has been significant. I mean, look at all the cases we’ve closed.”

“I know, I know …” Wendy says, waving a hand. “I suppose I’m talking more about a frame of mind. I watched you go through the divorce. I know you used work as a distraction, or a way to cope - and I don’t blame you. You have to admit that things haven’t been the same since.”

“No.”

“It wasn’t just losing Nancy and Brian, was it?”

Bill looks up from the amber slosh of his drink to meet her intuitive gaze. He wonders when she stopped pushing so hard to get into his brain. Maybe he put up too many walls. Maybe he’s built this fortress around himself, and he has no one but himself to blame for his loneliness. 

“You can trust me, you know.” She says, quietly. “With anything.”

Bill’s mouth slips partially open. The truth buds at the back of his tongue, longing to be free. He wants to tell her so badly. He wants someone to know so that he doesn’t have to bear the weight of himself alone, but a part of him wonders still if she might judge him for it. If she rejected him, he doesn’t know what he’d do. 

“Hey, Wen,” A cheerful voice interrupts the extending tension. “Trivia’s starting in two minutes. I need you on my team.”

Wendy and Bill both look up to see a tall, willowy woman with long, dark hair leaning into the doorway of the kitchen with a crooked smile on her mouth. 

“I’ll be right there.” Wendy assures. 

“All right, well hurry up. You’re my secret weapon.” The woman says, casting Wendy a conspiratorial wink. 

After she dips out of the doorway, Bill and Wendy share a quiet gaze. Bill thinks he senses something down in the pit of his stomach. He’s a good profiler, but maybe he’s not a very attentive friend. 

She walks past him into the living room before he can dissect that look in her eyes. 

  
  
  


Wendy’s friends turn out to be an inviting bunch who melt away Bill’s skepticism with socialization in under an hour. Wendy also keeps the drinks flowing, assuring that he doesn’t look back at his hestiance for the rest of the night. He thought he would feel uncomfortable in this large group of women that he barely knows, but after talking to several of them, he finds the conversations easier than most of his meager attempts with male peers. 

When Wendy puts him in a cab home later that evening, he’s tipsy and relaxed. He sinks down in the backseat to watch the flash of streetlamps cast garish light past the back window of the taxi. The sliver of a crescent moon beams from in between puffy clouds that block out starlight, but if he blinks just right with his fuzzy eyes, it melds into a full disc. 

Bill presses his eyes shut, feeling his head swim. Suddenly, he can smell Belfast in his nostrils, the smoky tang of incense. 

_ Every year, when the veil between our worlds is so thin, you will know I’m somewhere else - with someone else - and it’s going to kill you.  _ Holden’s voice whispers in his ear, cutting like a knife past the warmth in his chest on a deliberate path to his heart. 

When the cabbie drops him off at his apartment building, Bill numbly staggers inside. He’s on the second floor, forcing him to drag his inebriated limbs up a flight of stairs to his apartment. The arduous task takes two minutes, and a lot of labored panting. He fumbles with his key at the door knob, eventually pushing his way inside. 

He doesn’t bother to turn on the lights. He goes directly to his bed, kicks off his shoes, and falls down to the mattress with a heavy sigh. Past the alcohol daze, his stomach curdles at the thought of Belfast, half a world away, and some other unsuspecting human falling under Holden’s spell. Then he presses his eyes shut against the thought of how pathetic he’s become, and lets sleep take him. 

  
  
  


Bill has a massive headache the next day. He lays in bed with the sheets pulled over his head to block out the bright rays of the sun stretching past his window for several minutes until the urge to use the bathroom becomes too strong. 

After relieving himself, he pops some Tylenol, and brews a strong cup of coffee which he drinks black with haphazardly buttered toast. 

It’s the weekend, and Brian doesn’t have baseball anymore. Nothing to distract him from his own thoughts - more importantly, the thought of Holden consummating a new bond with someone else last night. He wonders if he should feel the sever in their connection once Holden moves on. He doesn’t feel any different this morning. Maybe that’s a reason to hope; and maybe it’s just another pitiful and improbable attempt at refuting Holden’s angrily sworn promise. 

He spends most of the day down at the apartment complex’s laundromat with a book and his cigarettes. Then, bolstered by productivity, he channels his nervous energy into cleaning the apartment from top to bottom. After he finishes vacuuming all of the carpet, a wave of exhaustion hits him, and he lays down on the couch to rest. 

He doesn’t know how long he was napping for, but mid-afternoon passes him by while he’s asleep. When he wakes to the sound of a fist knocking vehemently on the door of his apartment, the early, autumnal sunset has already unfurled beyond his window. 

Bill pushes up onto his elbows with a groan, and rubs hard at his eyes. Cobwebs of sleep cling to his brain, giving everything a surreal haze. 

The knock comes again urgently. 

“All right, all right …” Bill mutters, stumbling up from the couch. 

Had he not been so disoriented with sleep, he would have been more cautious and looked through the peephole first; but the person in the hall is all but banging his door down, demanding that he open up immediately. 

Bill yanks the chain open, flips the deadbolt, and pulls the door inward with the indignation of  _ “what the hell could be so pressing?”  _ burning in his chest; but his frustration meets a swift and startling end when sees who is standing just outside his door. 

They stare at one another for half a minute, utterly silent with shock, disbelief, and trepidation. 

Bill’s hand is trembling as he grasps the door frame for support. 

“Holden …” He says, his voice low and echoing alarm.

Holden’s red eyes are plain and lacking shine. His wind-chapped cheeks and limp, damp curls suggest a long walk in the early November weather that the leather jacket on his back couldn’t protect against. He’s trembling. 

Bill takes all of these details in, what they mean - what they don’t mean. He’s struck speechless until Holden gathers himself to speak. 

“Hi, Bill. Are you going to let me in?”


	6. Chapter 6

After Bill manages to surface from paralyzed shock, he takes a staggered step back from the doorway to let Holden into the apartment. A dozen questions flood his mind, but he can’t verbalize any of them. His mouth dangles, empty and groping, like a beached fish as Holden hastily enters, and pushes the door shut behind him. 

He throws his arms around Bill’s neck to pull him into a tight embrace. “I’m so glad I found you.”

Bill gingerly puts his hands on Holden’s lower back, noting the shiver rippling through him. Despite his surprise, he isn’t blind to the fact that a couple things about this encounter are markedly different from all the rest. 

Holden hangs onto him for several moments before he gingerly pulls back. His breath is warm, but all at once, Bill realizes it lacks its typical smoky undertone. 

“You knocked.” Bill says. 

Holden’s wide eyes dart away. 

“You knocked.” Bill repeats, bewildered. “Why didn’t you just come in? I mean, Christ, I’ve been looking for you - waiting for you.”

Holden retracts an arm from Bill’s neck so that he can cover his face with his palm. Bill is startled to realize that he’s beginning to cry. 

“What the hell is going on?” He struggles to soften his tone as his confusion mounts. 

Holden shakes his head, sniffling. 

“Holden. What did you do?” This time, the condemnation comes through strongly. A part of him already knows. 

Hastily wiping his cheeks, Holden looks up at him with swimming, red eyes. “I fucked up.”

Bill clenches his jaw as the admission hangs heavily in the air. He nods toward the couch. 

“Come on, let’s sit down.” 

Holden follows him across the room to the couch. He sinks to the cushions, and buries his face in his hands. 

“I want you to tell me everything.” Bill says, sternly, bracing his hands on his hips. “Don’t leave anything out.”

Holden nods, but doesn’t lift his head. 

Bill retrieves the tissue box from the bathroom, and sits down beside Holden. 

“Wipe your face.” Bill orders, “If you take a few deep breaths, you can get it under control.”

“What?”

“The crying. It’s just a chemical response to your stress level changing. Leaning into it makes it worse.”

Holden slowly lifts his face from his hands, and meets Bill’s gaze. “So … so you know?”

“That you got yourself exiled? Yeah, it’s not hard to figure out.” Bill says, motioning to Holden’s disheveled appearance. “You never knock. You look like you haven’t slept. Your hair is a mess. You’re  _ crying _ . You’re … human.”

Holden’s brow wrinkles, and his face begins to collapse into fresh tears again. 

“No, no.” Bill soothes, pressing one of the kleenexes to the corner of his eye where tears well in fat drops. “Come on, deep breaths.”

Holden squeezes his eyes shut in concentration, and draws in a quick, sharp breath. 

“I said deep, not fast. Slowly.”

Holden nods his head, and tries again. It goes in and out shakily like a deflating balloon losing it’s vivacity. He feels fragile, too, his damp cheek cupped in Bill’s hand clammy from the cold and emotion like a porcelain doll. 

“I imagine it’s a lot for this form to handle.” Bill murmurs, focusing on wiping Holden’s tears. “It’s an infant’s first instinct to cry when it’s thrust into the cold, harsh world, too.”

Holden’s dark, damp lashes flutter until his red eyes - the last vestige of his otherworldly heritage - peek out at Bill. 

“I didn’t think it would be this way,” Holden says, his voice wobbling. “When they told me this was my punishment … I didn’t-”

Bill sighs. Discarding the soiled tissue on the coffee table, he draws Holden’s head down his shoulder. Immediately, Holden latches onto the offered intimacy, and curls closer to his chest. 

“What did you do?” Bill asks, again, this time more gently. 

“I told you I would find a way for us to be together. That’s all I wanted.” Holden says, his voice a pitiful whisper muffled in Bill’s shirt. 

“You broke the rules again?”

Holden nods into Bill’s shoulder. “Yes, I … I went to the _ Sluagh _ .” 

“What’s that?”

“They are the undead of the Underworld. They were once faeries, but they became twisted and evil when they submitted to the Darkness. They take souls from earth each new year, but the victims are kept in a kind of living existence, like ghosts, with the host of other  _ sluagh  _ and human souls that have fallen before them.”

“Jesus …”

“I thought I could make a deal with them.” Holden says, lifting his head to hesitantly meet Bill’s gaze. “They know how to take a human into the Underworld without ending their life or existence; and the demon half of my lineage would ensure they would not reject me outright. They once had great respect for that part of my blood.”

“You wanted to turn me into a spirit so we could be together in the Underworld?” Bill asks, his alarm spiking once more. He massages his forehead with his fingertips. “Jesus, Holden. How would you know if I even wanted that?”

“It wouldn’t have been so terrible. It’s different in the Underworld, Bill. You don’t need these worthless human bodies to exist or feel things.”

“Let me guess. Somebody in the  _ púca  _ hierarchy found out?”

“They were already keeping a close eye on me because of … some other things. You humans might call it probation.” 

“What things?”

“Us, for one.”

“So I was right. You weren’t supposed to be visiting me when I was in Seattle?”

Holden nods, and lowers his head meekly. 

“Christ.” Bill says, rubbing a hand over his mouth and jaw. 

He studies Holden’s downturned face, still trying to convince himself any of this is happening. He wonders if he’s still laid out on this very couch, asleep and dreaming. The idea that Holden could stay here indefinitely feels like a wish fulfillment fantasy. 

Reaching out slowly, Bill strokes an unruly curl back from Holden’s forehead with his index finger. 

“I can’t believe you did this - got yourself kicked out of your world, your home - for me.” He whispers. 

“Of course I did.” He whispers, leaning into the caress. “I meant it when I told you I’d find a way.” 

Bill moves along his hairline, smoothing back damp hair until his thumb is rubbing at the soft shell of Holden’s ear, watching the tender skin flush in response. It feels real enough, perhaps more real than all of their other encounters now that there’s not a hint of magic between them. 

As Bill rubs his earlobe between thumb and forefinger, Holden presses his forehead into Bill’s.

“Well, you didn’t completely fail.” Bill says, giving a hoarse laugh. 

Holden’s mouth trembles with a weak smile. “No. We  _ are  _ together.”

Cradling Holden by the nape, Bill draws him into a passionate kiss unrestrained by guilt or shame. He’s beyond those cloying, cramping barriers. After spending the last year longing to see Holden again, he feels only sheer relief at Holden’s taste spilling ripe like apples and honey into his mouth.

Groaning, Holden curls his tongue forward to invade Bill’s mouth with more of that delicious taste and matched enthusiasm. He braces his hands against Bill’s chest, and pushes him back against the cushions so that he can crawl up onto Bill’s lap unobstructed. 

Bill claims Holden’s backside as he settles straddled over Bill’s thighs, hips rocking eagerly to get them into burning friction and need as quickly as possible. He tilts his head back to the grasp of Holden’s hand at his chin, and lets Holden control the pace of the kiss without complaint. 

The stroke of lips and grope of tongues comes without aphrodisiacal haze; his senses are fully aware and blazing, taking in every point of contact with stark appreciation, cataloguing them in his mind while his body reacts with intensely sober, touched-starved sensitivity. He can feel himself growing hard in a matter of moments, spell or no spell. 

Holden’s mouth breaks away from Bill’s with a quiet gasp for air. The palm cradling Bill’s cheek is warm with exhilaration and trembling. 

“Are you sure you still want me?” He whispers, sounding more unsure than Bill has ever heard him. “I’m nothing special now. Just a body …I don’t have any spells to make it magical or extraordinary or-”

“Holden,” Bill says, grasping Holden’s chin to turn his face back to him. “If you could read my mind right now, you would see that I don’t care about any of that. I want  _ you _ .”

Holden blinks. “But I’m just Holden now.”

“Yeah, you’ve always been Holden to me.”

A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. His eyes are glassy again, and he blinks away the emotion with a deep breath. 

“You have no idea right now …” Bill says, feeling somewhat triumphant in that concept. 

“About what?”

“This past year.” Bill grasps Holden’s backside tighter with his right hand while the other explores beneath his jacket. “I was sitting by the Rappahannock River four months ago thinking I was completely at your mercy. That’s how desperate I felt - I was ready to admit it to you or anyone that was listening.”

Holden’s eyes catch their shine. Bill has stopped thinking of their red as sinister. The way they sparkle now is what he’s longed to see ever since that afternoon on the bridge over Green River. 

“And how do you feel now?” Holden murmurs. 

Bill bites back a groan at the roll of Holden’s hips over his erection. “Just as desperate … maybe more.”

Holden’s mouth shapes it’s familiar smirk. As Bill’s hand snakes up his spine, he leans back to strip out of the leather jacket. Underneath, he’s wearing the same red t-shirt Bill had seen him in last time, a heathered fabric that easily breathes the heat of his skin from underneath. He raises his arms, and pulls it off over his head in one smooth motion. 

Bill hungrily appraises his exposed chest and abdomen, a wash of pale, toned skin that ripples underneath with barely contained desires. Spreading his palms across Holden’s back, he leans forward to bury a kiss in the pretty column of his throat. 

Uttering a moan, Holden tilts his head back to let Bill’s kisses flourish below his jawline and down his racing pulse. He clutches Bill’s head to him, guiding the eager pace downward, against the swell of his chest. When Bill kisses and licks gently at his nipple, he gasps aloud. 

“Oh, Bill-” He groans, pushing his hips harder into Bill’s erection hardly restrained by his sweatpants. 

Bill kisses in lavish strokes across Holden’s shuddering chest, and turns the other nipple taut and pink with fleeting flicks of his tongue and clamping suction. 

Holden wiggles in his embrace, sighing out effusive sounds of satisfaction. 

When Bill lets the tender bud of flesh slip from his mouth, he casts Holden a gaze of decisive need. Holden’s stare matches his own, but there’s no smug victory in the red gleam of his eyes. 

“I want to make love to you,” He says, low and breathless. 

Bill stares up at him. He can’t open his mouth. The phrase keeps ringing in his mind, his jaded defenses shooting it down while his fledgling yearning bears it up again. 

“Isn’t that what your people call it?” Holden asks, a frown flickering at his brow. 

“Uh, yeah …” Bill chokes out. 

“Come on, then.” Holden announces, climbing off Bill’s lap and to his feet. He tugs on Bill’s arm. 

Bill stands to join him on shaky knees. Stupidly, the relief that he’d cleaned so thoroughly this morning crosses his mind. He’s never been this nervous to have sex with someone. Perfect conditions are paramount. 

Holden kisses his tremulous mouth with confident sincerity. Cast from the Underworld, he hasn’t lost his charm. When he leans back, Bill’s head is all but spinning. Not drugged, just entirely overwhelmed that his aching loneliness is at last coming to an end.

Grasping him by the hand, Holden leads Bill down the hallway. In the bedroom, he pulls him around, and backs him up to the bed until Bill feels the mattress at the backs of his knees. 

He falls back to the waiting sheets, and moves his knees apart. As he strips his shirt off over his head, Holden steps forward to put his knee on the edge of the mattress between Bill’s thighs. His hand drops to the fastening of his jeans. 

Bill watches, feeling his cock twitch unbearably beneath his sweatpants, as Holden peels the denim away. His erection strains against his boxers, a gray fabric that makes his length and thickness easily visible. No lack of magic has changed his physique, a realization that makes Bill’s body clench with arousal down deep in his belly. 

“Take those off,” Holden murmurs, nodding at Bill’s sweatpants still trapping down his erection. 

Bill hurries to obey. Holden’s knee stays at the edge of the mattress, forcing him to lay back and lifts his legs in order to get them all the way off. Holden grabs them when they’re at his ankles, and tosses them away with fierce determination. Bill slips out of his boxers next, surrendering them to the same eager disrobing. 

He stays on his back against the sheets as Holden regards him with sharp red eyes that eat up his naked skin, his cock lying hard and twitching against his belly. 

“Oh,  _ a rúnsearc.  _ You’re just as beautiful as I remember.” Holden murmurs, prowling forward between Bill’s legs. “I’ve thought of you every day since the last time I saw you, afraid I would forget a detail. I devoted my mind and heart to you completely.”

Bill’s own scientific explanation echoes in his mind as tears sting the corners of his eyes.  _ Just a chemical response to stress …  _ But he can’t force the emotion back down with any number of deep breaths while Holden kisses him with a gentle, aching passion that threatens to destabilize his entire foundation. Instead, he squeezes his eyes shut over them, and returns the caress of Holden’s mouth with his own trembling kiss, barely a mustered fraction of all the yearning he has felt for a year - or perhaps three, every moment since Holden first appeared in his windowsill in Belfast. 

When Holden’s kiss travels from his mouth, Bill clenches his jaw shut against a rising whimper. He reaches up to try to brace himself with his fingers in Holden’s hair, but Holden catches him by the wrists. 

Pressing Bill’s arms above his head, Holden smirks down at him. “You  _ are  _ desperate, hm?”

Bill bites his lower lip, and nods. There’s no point in lying even if Holden doesn’t possess supernatural intuition any longer. 

“You want my cock inside you so bad.” Holden continues, bending to kiss the underside of Bill’s outstretched bicep. 

“Yes …” Bill breathes out, pressing his eyes shut. 

Every brush of Holden’s mouth against his skin makes his nerves jump. He’s unaccustomed to the contact on these concealed parts of his body that have been caressed by sun and self alone for so long. He wants to scream at the kiss of Holden’s mouth moving across his armpit, against the top of his ribcage, down against the tender pucker of his nipple because it must be more than he can take, more tender than his aching dick that he’s tried to assuage with his own hand too many times, more unbearable than his hole ridden raw on silicone in a search for fulfillment. 

“You’re going to cum for me so hard.” Holden promises, softly as his mouth patters against the shuddering crown of Bill’s belly. “You’re going to cum for me in a way you haven’t cum for anyone else …”

Bill’s breathing staggers in the back of his throat, drowning in sensation. Holden’s mouth is slipping down toward his navel, too slowly. 

“There … there hasn’t been anyone else.” He whispers, haltingly. 

Holden pauses in the middle of his stomach, red eyes lifting to catch Bill’s helpless stare with concealed surprise. It’s a strange kind of intimacy to admit that without Holden having foreknowledge of it - like stretching his belly open to the caress of a knife and trusting Holden not to gut him with it. 

“No one?” Holden murmurs, fingertips brushing along his inner thigh, so close to his cock that it burns. 

Bill shakes his head. “Y-you told me … I’m yours.” 

“And you told me you weren’t.” Holden says, his tone lilting with satisfaction as he kisses over Bill’s navel, down into the tenderest part of his belly where he’s quivering with need, where he’s slightly damp with pre-cum draining from his twitching cock. 

“I am. I don’t want anyone else.” Bill says, and thinks he must be beyond himself, out of his mind. The contact across his touch-deprived flesh has made him drunk in a whole other way; but he can’t raise a fight - doesn’t want to - as Holden’s mouth breathes warm air across his throbbing cock. 

“Ohh,” Holden sighs, laying eyes on the swollen shaft. “When’s the last time you came?”

Bill screws his eyes shut. Heat rushes his cheeks. He doesn’t want to think about it because it was nothing if not fraught desperation, a straining, ineffectual session with the dildo. 

“I don’t know …” He mumbles, hips straining toward the promise of Holden’s mouth. “Weeks …”

Holden kisses gently down the length of his cock, light and feathery contact that makes him want to cry, this time out of tormented need. He clutches at the sheets above his head, anchoring himself in place while his body trembles under the gradual pace of Holden’s pleasuring. 

At last, Holden gets down to the root of his cock and licks softly at his balls. 

“Fuck. Holden, please-” 

Holden hums a muffled sound of satisfaction. “I can tell.”

Before Bill can consider begging further, Holden takes him by the underside of his thighs and pushes his knees up to his chest. Straightening, he crowds up against Bill’s backside, and rubs his cock at his cleft. 

Bill’s pulse surges at the promise of penetration, and he thrusts a hand from above his head to point shakily at the nightstand. 

“In there … the drawer-” He says, “Lube.”

“Oh, yes.” Holden says, his eyes widening with realization. The thought that he can’t magically make Bill ooze with need any longer had gotten lost in the foreplay. 

He leans over to retrieve the bottle from the drawer, and pushes it shut again on the magazines and dildo still inside. Pouring a liberal amount directly over Bill’s cleft, he smiles with teeth pressed coyly to his lower lip. 

Bill groans at the cool lubricant dripping over his hole followed by the warm press of Holden’s fingers catching the excess and lathering it over him. The touch moves deftly and lightly at first, swirling the lube against the tender pucker, growing more firm when Bill arches up against it. 

“Oh, fuck …” Bill whispers. 

His eyes slide shut against the warm rush of satisfaction in his belly. The dull ache inside him swells until he’s pulsing with the desire to be stretched open, filled completely, fucked hard; and he wishes Holden could pluck the thought easily from his brain because he doesn’t know if he can speak it past his own panicked desire. 

Holden gradually presses a finger inside, testing the resilience of Bill’s body. There isn’t much, just a responding quiver, and he pumps his hand languidly, working his finger slowly but deeply down to the knuckle each time. 

“Ohh,  _ Jesus _ …” Bill groans, fists tearing at the sheets. His hips squirm up against the inadequate penetration as a rift of arousal consumes his pulsing cock. He wants to cum right this second just from the light brush of Holden’s fingertip against his prostate. 

Holden watches the winces and trembles working across Bill’s face intently. 

“How’s that?” He whispers, going deep and curling his finger. 

“Good.” Bill whimpers, cracking his eyelids open to cast Holden a pleading stare. “Don’t stop.”

Holden slips a second finger inside.

Bill feels the stretch and the dull ache, but he doesn’t complain, only pushes eagerly into it gasping, “Yes … God, yes.”

Holden moves his fingers apart inside him, urging clamped muscle to open up; then he has enough room to thrust his hand smoothly, crooking his fingers down low at the swollen rise of Bill’s prostate, and threatening to send Bill spilling over the edge into orgasm with every caress. The touches are just brief enough to keep him clinging to the verge, feeling his body open to the pumping rhythm and begging for more to offer the same amount of stimulation. 

“Please …” Bill groans, “Holden …”

“Hmm?”

“Hurry.”

Holden pauses to look at him, and sees the threadbare need in Bill’s eyes. Withdrawing his hand, he picks up the bottle of lube again to douse his cock. 

Bill licks his lips anxiously, unable to stop the impatient squirming of his hips. Every inch of him trembles with starved desire, not just for the feeling of Holden’s cock inside him again, but for Holden cradling him so close, whispering dizzying devotion into his ear, knowing what he wants and needs and giving it to him over and over again. 

“You want me?” Holden asks, again, clearly just as desperate. 

“I need you.” Bill says. 

Leaning over him, Holden guides his cock to Bill’s body, and slides inside. As they come together, Bill cries out. He feels it deep in his chest, from inside him. He feels it presently, in this moment, this aching, beautiful moment to which dreams or fantasy could never compare. 

He throws his arms around Holden’s neck, and pulls him down so their foreheads can join while their hips fuse. Their eyes remain open with scarce distance between them, less distance than there’s ever been. Bill notices the dilation of Holden’s pupils, black encroaching on scarlet, and the grimace of his mouth in pleasure, flashing canines no sharper than any other human’s. He’s trembling just as hard as Bill. 

“Oh, that’s good.” Holden whispers, his breath gusting hot at Bill’s cheeks as he thrusts against him. “Perfect,  _ a rúnsearc.  _ You’re perfect …”

Bill utters a choked groan before Holden’s lips capture his own, saving him having to conjure an adequate response. 

He doesn’t feel perfect. He feels aged and inadequate, pathetic and pinioned by his own shortcomings and needs. He feels like he’s getting more than he ever deserved. But some things - some small moments - can almost reach perfection, and with Holden’s arms around him, their bodies joined, he thinks this is about as close as he could ever get. 

  
  
  


After Bill retrieves a damp washcloth from the bathroom to clean them both up, they lay under the warm sheets in a clinging embrace. Holden’s head is tucked to Bill’s shoulder, and his hand rests on Bill’s chest, over his heart. Bill can feel the steady thump of it against Holden’s palm and throughout his entire body while his adrenaline cools and his muscles melt into relaxed bliss. 

Holden entirely lacks his usual verbosity. 

With the urgency of desire abated, Bill stares up at the webbed pattern in the ceiling plaster, and starts to think again about the reality of the situation they find themselves in. He hadn’t gotten to ask all the questions he wanted before they fell into bed. The sex had only shoved them to a muffled corner in his mind from which they now roam free. As much as he doesn’t want to question Holden’s renewed presence in his life after the satisfaction they just shared, he has to listen to his own logic. 

Carding his fingers into the hair at Holden’s nape, Bill tilts their heads apart so that he can look into Holden’s somber, red eyes. 

“So they took away all of your powers?”

A beat of silence, but Holden doesn’t break his gaze. “Yes.”

“You’re pretty much … human.”

“Almost.”

“Yeah, almost.” Bill murmurs, stroking his thumb across Holden’s cheek, “They left your eyes.”

“It’s a curse. They knew exiling me on Earth with red eyes would ensure my status as pariah.”

“I guess they didn’t account for me then. It doesn’t scare me.”

Holden smiles, faintly. “Nothing does.”

“That’s hardly true.”

“It is. It’s something I admire about you. You would have fared really well in the Underworld.”

“Hmm,” Bill laughs softly. “I guess we’ll never know.”

“No,” Holden sighs, gaze slipping away. 

Bill smooths Holden’s hair back behind his ear, and leans in to press a kiss to his temple. The muted tang of incense could have been sense memory and nothing more, but he savors its appearance in his nostrils. 

“So … this is forever?” He asks, carefully. 

Holden’s brow furrows. “Yes. Whatever ‘forever’ means for a human.”

Silence echoes around that disconcerting realization. 

Bill remembers Holden brushing aside the thought of mortality, suggesting that Bill take each day as it comes. It must have been easier to say it as an immortal being, and it must be horribly difficult now to accept the prospect of death after living unchanged for decades. 

“It seems harsh.” Bill remarks, “For what you did, I mean. You didn’t even get to implement your plan.”

“It doesn’t matter. They were  _ looking  _ for a reason. I’ve been shunned my entire existence, Bill. None of them could wait to get rid of me. I’m not even worth the trouble of imprisonment to them. They kicked me down to Earth so that they could forget I even exist.”

Bill holds him closer as Holden’s voice dwindles to a shaky whisper. 

Sniffing, Holden rubs his knuckles against his eye to dispel emotion. “I don’t want to keep talking about this right now. I don’t feel good.”

“What’s wrong?”

“My stomach aches, and I feel weird.” Holden says, sinking against Bill’s chest. “Dizzy.”

“When’s the last time you ate something?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Do you feel nauseous? Like you’re going to throw up?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never vomited before. My stomach feels hollow.”

“Right … Sounds to me like you’re just hungry. We could get take-out. There’s this great Thai place down the road.”

“Tie?”

“Thai, like Thailand … Nevermind, I’ll go get it.” Bill says, “Just stay here and rest.”

Holden grudgingly extricates himself from Bill’s arms, and sinks down against the pillow. Bill tucks the sheets up around his shoulders, and dresses in jeans and a polo. As he’s gathering his keys and wallet from the nightstand, Holden mumbles something from under the blanket. 

“What’s that?” Bill asks. 

Holden lifts his head, and casts him a plaintive gaze. “I love you.”

Bill swallows hard against the surge of panic in his chest. The last time someone said ‘I love you,’ he was never able to match her devotion, in turn breaking her heart; he’d spent a lot of time since then thinking he wasn’t capable of it. 

“I’ll be right back.” He says, weakly. 

  
  
  


Holden revives quickly after Bill returns with two take-out boxes of Pad Thai. They sit cross-legged on the bed beside each other, and Bill watches with barely contained amusement as Holden experiences Thai food for the first time, beginning with dubious curiosity that rapidly shifts to surprised delight. 

“This is incredible. What do you call it again?” 

“Thai. T-H-A-I. It’s from this little country in Southeast Asia, but this is the Americanized version.”

Bill can tell that none of that information matters to Holden as he slurps down a mouthful of noodles and his eyes roll back with a pleased sigh. 

“Do faeries not eat in the Underworld?” He asks. 

“Not like this.”

“I have good news then.”

“What?”

“There’s hundreds of different cuisines from around the world.” Bill says, “Just wait until you eat pizza for the first time.”

“Pizza?”

“Yeah. I won’t even try to explain it right now.”

Holden stifles a laugh, and bends over to kiss Bill on the cheek. “I can’t wait for you to show me everything.”

Bill smiles as Holden leans back to scoop the last of the Pad Thai into his mouth, but quickly sobers. 

“What the hell am I going to do with you?” He asks. 

Holden sets his empty take-out container aside on the nightstand, and draws his knees to his chest. His mouth curls into an impish smile. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I have no explanation for who you are or where you came from.”

“Make something up.” Holden says, with a shrug. “It was surprisingly easy to get here, Bill. All I had to do was find someone who kind of looked like me, take their wallet, and buy a plane ticket.”

“You stole from someone?” Bill asks, pushing up from the headboard with a scowl. “And took their identity?”

“What? How else was I supposed to get here? They tossed me out in Belfast with nothing but the clothes on my back.”

Bill rubs both hands over his face. “Jesus Christ.”

“What’s the big deal?”

“The  _ big deal  _ is that you can’t just steal from someone and get away with it. You also can’t just live here in the United States without having proof of citizenship. You have to have a social security number, an address, a birth certificate, pay taxes. Right now, you don’t have any of that.”

Holden makes a face. “Why?”

“Because - you just …  _ can’t. _ ” 

“You work for the government, though. You can fix it, right?” 

Bill sighs, massaging his eyelids with his thumb and forefinger. “It’s more complicated than that.”

Holden crawls forward to lace his arms around Bill’s neck and press a row of warm, seeking kisses across his cheek and mouth. Bill submits to it despite the knot of worry beginning to form in his chest. 

“It’s okay,” Holden whispers, “I know you’ll take care of me, Bill.”

Bill opens his eyes to meet Holden’s sincere gaze. He wonders why it’s so difficult to say ‘no’ even now that Holden doesn’t have any magical power over him. Why does he want to give everything to this young man whose origins and intentions have always been so murky? Why is he willing to face hellfire to know that he’s safe, that they’ll never be separated again?

“Yes, I will,” He says. He caresses Holden’s cheek softly, then pinches him by the chin and gives it a small wag. “In the meantime, how are we going to explain away those eyes?”

“A rare condition?” Holden suggests, shrugging casually. “Sunglasses to cover them? Blindness? I’m certain we’ll think of something.”

Bill shakes his head as Holden suddenly darts out of his arms and off the bed to retrieve his pants from the floor. 

“You worry too much, Bill.” Holden says, digging through the pockets. 

“Not worrying enough is what got you into this situation.” 

Ignoring the stern remark, Holden locates what he was searching for in his left side jeans pocket. 

“Ah, here it is.” He says, lifting it triumphantly. 

He bounds back onto the bed, and kneels in front of Bill as if he’s proposing and the red jasper stone is a diamond ring. 

“Here,” He says, “I knew you were missing it.”

“I thought I lost it for good.” Bill says, accepting the stone. It has the groove on the side, worn down by his thumb strokes so he knows it’s the same one he left on the bridge. 

“I was just holding it for you,” Holden says, sinking down to his side on the mattress and propping his elbow under him. He tilts his head to watch Bill’s face as he studies the gleam of the red crystal in the low lamplight. “I could feel your energy and spirit in. I would hold it to my mouth and remember your kisses.”

“Just the kisses, huh?”

Holden’s smile is devilish. “I remember it all. Don’t you?”

“The important parts.” Bill says, sinking down beside Holden. He leans forward, brushing his mouth against Holden’s. “Is it bad for me to say that I’m glad you’re like this?”

“Why?”

“I can kiss you without feeling like I’ve been roofied.”

Bill can tell Holden is smart enough to figure out a synonym he knows for ‘roofied’ as he willingly submits his mouth to Bill’s hungry kisses without protest. He takes advantage of Holden’s agreeable state, full and warm and lax with Thai food and rest, and gently pushes him back against the sheets. Rolling up onto his elbow over Holden, he kisses him until Holden opens, and he’s panting and moaning softly at the proceeding cruise of Bill’s tongue taking inventory of his mouth. 

Holden begins to reach up to lay some decisive hold on him, but Bill presses his wrist to the pillow beside his head. When he leans back, Holden gazes at him with pinched eyes and pouting lips. 

“Oh, I’m so hard …” He murmurs, as if surprised by the realization that he’s felt a hundred times before. 

Bill glances down to see his cock throbbing against his belly and his body squirming, possessing no supernatural power over bodily impulses or extra physical strength to supersede his will over Bill’s. 

“Don’t you want to be?” He whispers, slowly shifting lower to drop a feathery row of kisses down Holden’s shivering chest. 

“I do, it’s just …” Holden murmurs, eyes pressing shut. “It’s all very intense in this form … Like I’ve never felt it before.”

“You know how I feel now.” 

Holden doesn’t reply, only pinches his teeth over a groan as Bill moves his legs apart, and strokes his soft thighs and swollen testicles with a firm caress. His hips start up from the mattress, and he reaches down to grab at Bill’s hand applying the slow pleasuring. 

“Oh, so you want me to stop?” Bill asks, archly. 

“No.” Holden whines, shaking his head vehemently against the pillow. 

“Put your hands over your head.”

Holden’s red eyes slip open to see Bill kneeling between his open legs. His body trembles, cock twitching helplessly against their layered grasps. He slowly retracts his hand, and puts them both over his head. 

Bill places the jasper stone in the middle of his chest where it wobbles slightly on the staggering ridge of his sternum. 

“Lay still,” Bill says, low. 

Holden’s nostrils flare with a deep breath and his brow quivers with desperation, but he doesn’t protest. 

“Good,” Bill murmurs, bending to scatter kisses down his belly. “It’s overly sensitive because you just came not very long ago. It gets raw after one too many times. Over-stimulated.”

Holden shudders at the warm gust of Bill’s breath on his cockhead. 

“Does it hurt?”

“You never asked me that when you were fucking me for the tenth time in a row.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re not.” Bill says, suppressing a chuckle as he traces the length of Holden’s pulsing cock with his fingertips. 

“Ohhh …” Holden moans, stiffening to the caress. “Does it hurt?”

“More of an ache, a burn …” Bill whispers, curling his fingers around the shaft. 

He pumps his hand languidly, watching with barely controlled satisfaction as Holden struggles not to buck and writhe. The stone teeters on his chest, threatening to tumble to one side, and he eases his touch. The tip is leaking pre-cum that he smears with his thumb, rubbing the faint moisture all across the opening and furrow. 

“Oh,  _ ohh _ -” Holden whines, his face twisting into an aroused grimace.

His feet push across the mattress before finding purchase with his curled toes. His knees begin to collapse in on Bill’s hand around his cock. 

Grasping Holden’s left knee, Bill spreads him out against the mattress, and bends down to take his cock in his mouth. 

Somehow, in all their time together, Bill had never done this for him. Holden had been a bit too preoccupied with fucking him to the brink of sanity, and Bill had been too drugged with kisses to do more than crouch on his knees for the next round; and maybe a part of him had been avoiding it all along, hearing some rude voice inside his head saying  _ cocksucker  _ again and again. He throws off that derogatory thought now as the fleshly taste of Holden’s cock, tinged with the salty zest of cum invades his mouth, thrills across his senses. 

He has no confidence in his abilities; despite his many trips to seedy motels, it’s been a long time since he gave anyone a blowjob. Sure, he’s received dozens. Tried to put a whole, big cock in his mouth and make it feel sexy and incredible? Not hardly. But whatever he’s lacking, he tries wholeheartedly to make up for with enthusiasm. 

It’s difficult at first because he doesn’t relax his jaw or lips, and it’s a little too forceful; but as Holden whimpers and quivers from above, panting his exhilaration, nerves melt away into dizzying excitement. When Holden’s cock begins to glide smoothly into his mouth and responsive saliva gushes from the back of his tongue into a wet, sloppy mess around Holden and Bill’s fist wrapped around him, the last of his hesitance fades. 

Bill opens his eyes to get a look at Holden’s face, and sees it scrunched up in mounting pleasure, his back arched and shivering while his hips thrust gently, the red jasper somehow staying aloft on his chest by something like magic. 

“Oh, yes …” Holden chokes out, reaching instinctively for Bill’s head as pleasure arises. “Oh, I’m close, I’m close-”

Bill retreats abruptly as Holden gropes at his hair. His lips come off Holden’s cock with a wet smack, and saliva strings between his tingling lips and the gleaming, pink head. 

Holden’s eyes spring open. “What? What is it?”

Bill licks the excess saliva off his lower lip, taking a moment to enjoy the look of panicked desperation in Holden’s wide, red eyes. 

“I told you to put your hands above your head.” Bill reminds him, his voice raspy from friction. 

Holden musters a glare that doesn’t translate much further than his narrowed eyes; his mouth is quivering with delight. His hands rise obediently above his head again. 

Bill adjusts his grasp on the root of Holden’s cock, and pumps his fist. His fingers are tacky with his own spit. Holden’s cockhead glistens with a mix of saliva and pre-cum. It twitches, lively and desperate, against his palm. 

“Terrible, isn’t it?”

“Hmm?” Holden hums, scowling and squirming against Bill’s touch. 

“Wanting to cum so fucking bad.”

“I do,” Holden whispers, urging up against Bill’s fist. He blinks his eyes, well aware that one carefully crafted look of imploring innocence from him can send Bill’s resistance toppling. “Oh, I want to cum in your mouth so bad.”

Bill holds onto his reserve by threads. Maintaining his grip on Holden’s cock, he leans closer again to breathe warmly over the inflamed tip where pre-cum drizzles in narrow, glassy rivulets. 

Holden bites back a whine. His hips strain toward the promise of Bill’s mouth, but Bill holds him just close enough that he can extend his tongue to lick away the arousal but nothing more. 

“Ohh,” Holden groans, quietly. His cock twitches wildly in Bill’s fist. “What do you want, Bill?”

Bill jerks him, slowly. “You’ve never begged for anything in your life, have you?”

Holden’s nostrils flare, and his eyes slip open to expose the depths of his red eyes. They burn, clinging to their demonic nature. Bill feels himself slipping closer to the ring of fire. Does he dare step too far?

“No,” Holden pants, his expression pained. “I’ve never needed anything from anyone … until you-”

Bill slips his mouth briefly over the head of Holden’s cock, applying a single swirl of his tongue. 

Holden jolts and cries out, hands twisting white-knuckled over the disheveled halo of auburn curls. 

“Oh, please!” The cry emerges smoothly from his pale, graceful throat. “Please, Bill; please, oh please …”

Bill’s head rushes with a surge of exhilaration and need, and he sees clearly now how Holden could become addicted to these wheedling cries; but he doesn’t have Holden’s same willpower as he submits all too readily to the plaintive moans turning to a raspy, yet persistent chant. He bends to take Holden’s cock back into his mouth, sufficing the pleading almost immediately. 

Holden’s voice bends into a strangled, elongated moan of satisfaction, and his hands forget their place. They surge down into Bill’s hair, nails going over his scalp like hot needles that expel shivers down his spine and clamping tight at the nape to push him down harder.

Holden’s cock fills Bill’s mouth repeatedly at a rough, eager pace as Bill lets his head be directed and his mouth stay open, fucked hard the same as his hole. The illusion of control slips beyond the horizon, and he doesn’t stay to watch it go; he leans forward into the unstoppable pace of Holden’s pleasure bowling wildly towards its finish, utterly content with what pleas he’d gotten from him. 

When Holden seizes at the first wave of orgasm, his cock lodges deep into Bill’s mouth. Cum gushes from him a few seconds later, exploding across the back of Bill’s tongue. Bill jerks back instinctively, almost choking, swallowing without meaning to, reeling at the sharp, heady taste of male orgasm in his mouth. After a few uncoordinated thrusts of his mouth, Holden lets him lean back, and the remainder of his cum spatters Bill’s mouth, nose, and cheek. 

Bill squeezes his eyes shut until it ends. He can feel cum cooling and dripping down his cheek and chin, and hear Holden panting heavily through the aftershocks. Finally, the bed creaks as Holden sits up, and he uses the washcloth from before to wipe the worst from Bill’s face. 

“Okay, you can open your eyes.” Holden murmurs once he’s done. 

Bill slowly cracks his eyelids open. 

Holden’s face is barely an inch away, cheeks flushed rosy from climax and eyes sparkling. He cradles Bill’s jaw in his hand, and rubs his thumb across Bill’s raw lower lip. 

“I know now what you humans mean when you say something took your breath away.” Holden whispers, “You make it hard to even breathe,  _ a rúnsearc. _ ”

Bill instinctively looks away, his face burning. He can’t seem to get that reaction under control. 

“Come on,” He says, clearing his throat after a moment, “Let’s get a shower and get to bed. I’m beat.”

Holden agrees without complaint. 

In the bathroom, Bill lets the shower water run hot for several minutes so that the atmosphere in the room is muggy like a sauna. The shower is big enough for both of them to stand inside and take turns under the spray of the water. When they’re both clean, he pulls Holden under the water with him, and they cling to each other without speaking while the warm water cascades over them. 

Later, when they’re lying in bed with the lights turned off, the crescent moon is almost wasted away and cloud cover blocks out the stars. The room is completely dark except for Holden’s eyes, wide awake despite the late hour. 

“Bill …” He whispers. 

“Yeah?”

“I enjoyed that. Is it some kind of mating ritual here on earth?”

Bill knows he means the shower not the sex because he feels it, too. He’s had sex with a lot of people, been intimate with very few. 

He thinks about Nancy standing on the sidewalk outside of their divorce lawyer’s office, crying.  _ You never let anyone in.  _ And Holden that first night they met.  _ A man who doesn’t want anyone to think he feels anything - but he does. He feels everything so much and it’s killing him that he can’t let it out  _ …  _ I’m going to fuck that notion right out of you.  _ He’d done a lot more than that. 

“Not that I know of.” Bill says, after a moment. 

Holden sighs, and flops down beside him. They curl together, Holden’s chest to Bill’s back, cradling him. 

Bill closes his eyes. He thinks that rituals are what we make with the people we love. 

  
  
  


When Bill wakes up the next morning, his limbs are leaden and stiff from long, deep sleep. It takes him several moments to convince his eyes to open to the daylight, and his body to move from its position curled toward the window. When he rolls onto his back, he sees that the other half of the bed is empty. 

The details of the night before come rushing back in a flood. 

Holden. Exile. Sex. Love confessions. 

Sleep entirely fled from his mind, Bill sits up, and tosses the covers back with acute panic squeezing in his chest. Was it all a dream? 

He crawls out of bed, and finds his sweatpants crumpled on the floor exactly where he remembers Holden throwing them last night. Pulling them on hastily, he exits the bedroom, and rushes down the hallway. He stops in the doorway of the living room, bracing his hand against the wall to support himself against the weakening tide of relief. 

Holden is sitting on the couch in his underwear, sipping from a glass of water. The case files from Bill’s last consult request are spread out on the coffee table. He looks up at the sound of Bill’s approach, and smiles brightly. 

“Good morning, Bill.”

“Uh, good morning. What are you doing?” Bill asks, frowning at the disassembled crime scene photos, witness statements, and police reports.

“You left this box sitting out.” Holden says, motioning to the banker’s box at his feet. 

“So you thought you would just go through it?”

“Yes.”

“See anything interesting?”

“Yes,” Holden says, tartly. “You humans are not as benign as my people have led me to believe.”

“No, we can actually be pretty terrible when we want to be.”

“Not you.” 

Bill raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Well…”

“I know everything about you, Bill. You wouldn’t do anything like this …” Holden says, waving at the bloody crime scene photos. 

“Yeah, not anything like  _ that _ , but I’m no angel,” Bill admits, sinking down to the couch cushions beside Holden. “There’s a lot of definitions of ‘bad people’ in the world.”

“You’ve always been good to me,” Holden says, scooting closer to Bill.

“Yeah?” Bill murmurs. He slips his arm around Holden’s waist, drawing him closer. 

“Yes, it makes me wonder how you became someone whose job it is to study bad people.”

“I wanted to know, I guess.” 

“Know?”

“What makes people do what they do.”

“And why do they do what they do?”

“I don’t know. I’m still figuring that out.”

Holden laughs softly, nudging the heel of his hand playfully into Bill’s chest. “You wrote a book about it.”

“My colleague, Wendy Carr, wrote a book about it. I helped.”

“I’ve read some of the correspondence from the police here. It makes it sound like you’re the leader, the expert.”

“I did found the BSU several years ago, but there’s still a lot I don’t know. That file is just the tip of the iceberg. And besides, my knowledge only applies to humans and this earthly dimension.”

“So, what you’re saying is … you still don’t have me figured out?” Holden murmurs, mouth tipping impishly at the prospect.

Bill studies Holden’s face, struck by how surreal this moment is with the warm curve of his back under Bill’s palm, the very presence of him on Bill’s couch, defying the thousands of miles between here and Belfast. 

“No,” He says, shaking his head. “No, I have no idea why you sacrificed your entire life - your immortality - to be here. For me. I- I just don’t-”

“Bill,” Holden says, somberly, pressing his fingertips to Bill’s mouth. 

“What?”

“You don’t know what my life was before we met. The magic that humans crave to understand can be a curse as much as a blessing. My own parents betrayed me by bringing me into that world - a cruel and divided world where I never fit properly anywhere. Until you.”

“Holden, I don’t know if you’ll fit in here either,” Bill whispers, worriedly. “I’ll do my best to help you and take care of you and l-”

He stops. The word crests on the back of his tongue, stalling at the last moment. Holden’s eyes spark with anticipation, and Bill looks away from their dismantling red stare. He clears his throat. 

“I’ll do anything I can to help your transition into living here smooth and uneventful,” He presses on. “But I can’t promise you that it will always be safe.”

“Safe?”

“It’s like you said. People fear what they don’t understand. And now you know-” Bill gestures to the gruesome photos on the coffee table. “They aren’t always as kind as I am.”

“Bill, please,” Holden says, smiling coyly. He shifts a little closer, and tucks his fingers under Bill’s chin to make him look into his eyes. “Remember when we talked about the length of my existence?”

“Yeah,” Bill says, warily. 

“I’ve lived more experiences than most people will in their entire lifetimes. I’ve fought in wars. I’ve faced demons, but never at my own behest until now. I’ve lived my life as a foot soldier for the powerful, adhering to their rules and the constraints they placed on me because of my heritage. My life is my own now, and it doesn’t frighten me.”

Bill scoffs a quiet, bewildered laugh. He hadn’t considered their situation in that light yet. 

“That’s what you represent to me. Freedom.” Holden adds, softly, leaning in to kiss him on the mouth. 

Bill savors the exchange for a long moment before, slipping his fingers into the hair at Holden’s nape to draw him deeper into the kiss. The taste of him strikes heady and rich, clear and unadulterated by magic. He’s here. Flesh and blood in Bill’s arms. It offers a sense of powerful euphoria. 

Leaning back, Bill looks into Holden’s demonic eyes. “It’s better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.” 

Holden’s head cocks curiously. 

“John Milton,” Bill says. “He had a lot to say about devils and angels, and Satan himself being banished. I’ll have to introduce you.”

“You’re likening me to your Devil?” Holden asks, arching a contemptuous brow despite the smile starting at the corners of his mouth. 

“Only in the best way possible. Now, c’mere. I still can’t fucking believe you’re here.”

Holden easily relinquishes himself back into the kiss and Bill’s enveloping embrace. Wrapping both arms around Bill’s neck, he tucks himself closer until he’s squirming into Bill’s lap, leaving the crime scene photos at his back and out of sight. 

Bill impresses the new, fragile human taste of him to his tongue. Gone is the smoky aftertaste, the singe of demonic fire. All that’s left are those hypnotic eyes. He isn’t entirely convinced there isn’t yet some magic inside them. 

Entangled, they kiss slowly and deliberately yet sloppy with eager saliva for a few minutes until Bill’s wandering hands begin massaging over Holden’s backside and working the elastic of his boxers away from his hips.

Here, Holden extricates his mouth again, moaning softly, “Bill …”

“Hmm?” 

Holden manages to catch his breath before casting him a sheepish gaze, aided by a nervous flush. “Are you going to feed me again?”

Bill stops what he’s doing with his hands to laugh. “I’m sorry. Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” Holden says, exasperated. He pulls out of Bill’s embrace as Bill chuckles at his frustration. “These human bodies are so fragile and needy. How do you stand it?”

“Well, brace yourself. We’re supposed to eat three meals a day. If we’re healthy.”

“Three?”

“Yep.” 

Holden sighs, dramatically. “It’s so tedious.”

“Okay, calm down. It isn’t all bad.” Bill says, dropping a kiss on Holden’s cheek before nudging him to get up from his lap. “You haven’t tried eggs and bacon yet.”

Holden perks up at Bill’s promising tone. He scampers after Bill to the kitchen, and watches curiously as Bill starts by filling the coffee pot with water and grounds. 

“You can’t have breakfast without coffee,” Bill advises, flipping the lid shut, and turning the pot on. 

“What’s it like?”

“Coffee?”

“Yes,” Holden says, bending down to watch as the dark liquid begins to drip down through the filter and into the carafe. 

“You’ll see,” Bill says, “But it has this little thing in it called caffeine that we humans really rely on to get through the day. Some magic on earth, if you will.”

“Oh, really?” Holden asks, brow arching skeptically. 

“Yep, we’ve got a few tricks of our own that aren’t related to the Underworld.”

Bill nudges him out of the way so that he can get to the cabinet with the skillets. After firing up the stove, he pulls eggs, bacon, and bread out of the refrigerator.

Holden climbs up onto the counter to watch him cook, asking questions periodically. Each new answer is met with some amazement and curiosity, not unlike watching a baby discovering the world from the crawling position for the first time. Stripped of his powers, Holden’s situation isn’t far off from that analogy, and despite Holden’s blasé confidence in himself, Bill is needled with concerns. 

His worries however, get swept away for most of the weekend. Holden is insistent upon leaving the apartment so they can explore downtown Fredericksburg. At a clothing boutique, he wheedles Bill into purchasing not one, but four pairs of sunglasses.

“You’re the one who is so worried about my eyes,” He reminds Bill as he tries on every pair of sunglasses on the stand via the small mirror at the top. 

“Okay, fine,” Bill sighs, waving at the checkout counter, “Let’s go.”

After they leave the shop, Holden rips the price tag off a pair of reflective Aviators, and walks past the rows of shop windows lining the sidewalk as if he’s on the runway. 

Bill walks further behind him struggling not to laugh. The pessimistic little voice in the back of his mind tells him that they shouldn’t be drawing so much attention to themselves. He should be tucking Holden away from the world and all it’s dangers until they can safely integrate and validate his existence into society; but he can’t deny how carefree he feels, how much this day out on the town feels like a first date between high school sweethearts - as if none of the heartache and pain of the last two decades happened. 

At the end of the weekend, they lay in bed together, naked except for the sheets tangled around their waists. Bill rolls over to kiss Holden’s half-asleep mouth, startling his red eyes open in the shadows. 

“What?” He mumbles. 

“Nothing,” Bill whispers, curling an arm around Holden’s waist to pull him closer and burying his face in his neck. “I just think …”

Holden’s fingertips trail down his nape, stirring shivers. “Think what?”

It’s still strange that he can’t magically read Bill’s mind, and complete that sentence himself. It’s strange and terrifying, yet exhilarating what Bill is about to admit. 

“I think I believe in love again,” He murmurs into Holden’s neck. 

Holden is quiet for a moment before leaning back, his eyes like twin beacons in the night. Bill can make out the glistening white of his teeth exposed by a smile. 

It isn’t “I love you” yet. It isn’t even particularly confident, but he’d said it aloud, a fledgling anecdote to his grimly realistic worldview. He doesn’t know what will happen tomorrow for six months from now. He doesn't know how hard it will be to make Holden’s existence in this world unsuspecting or if he’ll end up getting both of them into trouble in the process; but he has to believe, for once in his life, that he deserves this - that they both do. Like everything else - Holden, this weekend together, their future - his hesitant admission feels real enough that it can’t ever be taken from him again. 


End file.
